The United Kingdom is the first country in the world to approve the use of antiviral covid pills.
Antivirals are drugs that prevent the virus from spreading in the body and are taken immediately after a person has been infected when the spread is greatest.
A large British study is now examining the effects of the pills.
Four pills a day
Amy-Claire Davies is one of the patients in the risk group who had the pills delivered to her door when she became ill with covid.
She, like half of the patients in the study, took four pills a day for five days shortly after she became infected.
- If I had not received antivirals, I think I would have been hospitalized.
Only during the 48 hours after I tested positive did I start to feel very bad, and I think it would have gotten worse if I had not received the treatment, says Amy-Claire Davies.
The researchers compare the outcome for the patients who received the pill with the other half who were treated with other care.
The study involves 10,000 patients in the country who are at risk or over 55 years of age.
Expensive to produce
Many researchers hope that antiviral pills may play a crucial role in the fight against the coronavirus in the future.
But so far, antivirals against corona are only available in small quantities and they are expensive to produce.
Therefore, they will in future be used for the patients who will benefit most from the antiviral medicine.
- I think we will be able to use them for a relatively limited part of the population that is at greatest risk.
We will use them as a way to keep people safe at home, says Richard Hobbs, who is leading the study from Oxford University in the UK.
Play the video to see Amy-Claire talk about how the covid pill helped her.
See more in The World of Science "How to stop the next pandemic" 20/3 on SVT Play and 21/3 at 20.00 on SVT2.