WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – A local doctor says it’s the best COVID news he has heard in a long time: Pfizer has a pill COVID-positive patients can take and they have a lower chance of getting seriously sick or dying.
The pill is called Paxlovid. Pfizer says after testing the drug on 775 adults, those who took the pill had an 89 percent lower rate of hospitalization or death from the virus compared to patients who took a placebo pill.
The Food and Drug Administration still needs to approve it. If it does, you can get the pill at pharmacies.
“The way the medication works is it prevents the virus from replicating or dividing in the system. People who recieved it in the first three days had an 89 percent reduction in the change of becoming sick enough to be hospitalized or subsequently dying from COVID,” said Dr. Joseph Wetterhahn, Samaritan Family Health.
Wetterhahn says even patients who took the pill five days after infection saw success with the treatment.
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