Afsané Sabouhi, edited by Ugo Pascolo with AFP 7:00 p.m., October 25, 2021

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has announced that it will prioritize Molnupiravir. This treatment, a pill developed by the American laboratory Merck, could well be the long-awaited treatment since the start of the pandemic. According to preliminary results, it allows a 50% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths.

Three tablets morning and evening to prevent the development of a serious form, and possibly hospitalization.

This is the promise of Molnupiravir, the anti-Covid pill developed by the American laboratory Merck, which could well be the long-awaited treatment since the start of the pandemic.

And the latter has just taken a first step towards marketing, since the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced on Monday the launch of the accelerated review of the pill.

A decision that comes two weeks after Merck requested emergency authorization in the United States for this drug.

"It inhibits the multiplication of the virus in the body"

Preliminary results from laboratory and clinical studies "suggest that the drug may reduce the ability of SARS-CoV-2 (...) to multiply in the body, thereby preventing hospitalization or death in patients. patients with Covid-19 ", justified the EMA. Concretely, "the interest of Molnupiravir lies in the fact that it is a direct antiviral, it therefore inhibits the multiplication of the virus in the body", details to Europe 1 Professor Gilles Pialoux, infectious disease specialist at the Paris hospital Tenon. 

"When we compare the active molecule to a placebo, there is a 50% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths. These are very encouraging results, preliminary but sufficiently important for the European agency to decide to accelerate the case of evaluation of this treatment. " 

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A treatment that does not replace vaccines

But be careful, even if this treatment would keep all its promises, it does not replace the vaccine against Covid-19 in any way, warns the specialist.

"It is in addition. This treatment could have an impact on the forms in town, in outpatient, so it concerns a lot of patients, probably even more than one thinks since these are people who do not enter the hospital. 'hospital."

Merck is also in the process of conducting a separate clinical trial for a second use of the treatment, as a preventive measure, for people who have been in close contact with the virus to avoid developing the disease.