The American pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. has experienced a setback with a beacon of hope for combating the corona pandemic: It has now presented updated study data for a drug for the treatment of infected people that are worse than the interim results published at the beginning of October.
The new numbers include all 1,433 participants in the study, and according to them, the Merck therapeutic molnupiravir reduced the risk of hospitalization or fatal disease after infection by 30 percent. In October, Merck & Co. had presented data for about half of the study participants, and at the time there was talk of reducing the risk by about 50 percent.
With the updated data, the company is even worse off than its competitor Pfizer, who announced a few weeks ago that studies have shown that its corona pill Paxlovid has reduced the risk of hospitalization or fatal disease by 89 percent.
The data from Merck & Co. and Pfizer are not necessarily directly comparable, but now they suggest that Pfizer's pill could be significantly more effective.
The pills have the advantages over the mostly intravenously administered antibody drugs, which up to now have often been given to sick people, that they can be taken easily at home and are cheaper.
The drug from Merck & Co. is already on the market in Great Britain, and an application for approval has been submitted in the USA.