Coronavirus: Anti-Covid pill has been given to nearly 1,000 patients

Almost one thousand patients have received the anti-Covid pill Molnupiravir in Cyprus, of whom seven per cent required hospitalisation for the virus, a health official said Thursday.

Speaking to the Cyprus News Agency, acting head of the pharmaceutical services at the health ministry Dr Elena Panagiotopoulou said the pill by Merck, known in Europe as MSD, was administered to 984 patients, with seven per cent of them ending up in hospital.

The administration of Molnupiravir for the treatment of coronavirus started mid-January in the island and so far, there are no reports of adverse side effects or fatalities, Panagiotopoulou added.

No other country has reported a mortality related to the new MSD antiviral drug, she said.

She explained the current national data are not sufficient to conclude on the efficacy of the antiviral pill. To draw a safe conclusion, Panayiotopooulou said, an equal number as the one of the patients who received the drug should have been given a placebo pill to see how many of them would end up in hospital.

The health official stressed that it was better to have drugs such as Molnupiravir available than not “especially [for] the population groups that need it”.

Molnupiravir is taken within five days from the onset of symptoms or in the case of asymptomatic patients, the positive test. It is recommended for people over 65 and not for those under 18.

According to the studies conducted, Molnupiravir has shown proven efficacy in reducing hospitalisations and/or deaths by 30 per cent with a reduction of up to 89 per cent in the mortality parameter in particular.

Molnupiravir has also been shown to reduce the risk of serious illness or death in people affected by Covid-19 disease, from 14.1 per cent in people taking placebo, to 7.3 per cent in people taking Molnupiravir, out of a total of 775 participants.