WHO ‘strongly recommends’ Pfizer's Covid-19 pill for at-risk patients: Report

The WHO experts said that US pharma giant Pfizer’s combination of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir was the “superior choice” of treatment for unvaccinated, elderly or immunocompromised people with Covid-19, according to AFP.

LONDON: The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday said that it “strongly recommends” Pfizer’s Covid-19 antiviral pill Paxlovid for patients with milder forms of the disease who were still at a high risk of hospitalization, said news agency AFP.

However, the global health agency warned that it was “extremely concerned” that the inequality in access seen with Covid-19 vaccines would again leave low-and-middle-income countries “pushed to the end of the queue.”

The WHO experts said in the BMJ medical journal that US pharma giant Pfizer’s combination of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir was the “superior choice” of treatment for unvaccinated, elderly or immunocompromised people with Covid-19.

For the same patients, the WHO also made a “conditional (weak) recommendation” of the antiviral drug remdesivir, made by US biotech firm Gilead, that it had previously recommended against.

The WHO recommended Paxlovid over remdesivir, as well as over Merck’s molnupiravir pill and monoclonal antibodies, news agency AFP reported. Pfizer’s oral treatment prevents hospitalization more than the “available alternatives, has fewer concerns with respect to harms than molnupiravir, and is easier to administer than intravenous remdesivir and antibodies,” the WHO’s experts said.