A new $3.2 billion program will support the development of antiviral pills, which could start arriving by the end of this year.

[Harvist]

A Pill to Treat Covid-19? The U.S. Is Betting on It. nytimes.com/2021/06/17/heal...

[neurodervish]

I wasn't able to open the article (even with my NYT account. Any chance you could edit your post and paste in the article? I'd love to read it! 😃

[Harvist in reply to neurodervish]

The U.S. government spent more than $18 billion last year funding drugmakers to make a Covid vaccine, an effort that led to at least five highly effective shots in record time. Now it’s pouring more than $3 billion on a neglected area of research: developing pills to fight the virus early in the course of infection, potentially saving many lives in the years to come.

The new program, announced on Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services, will speed up the clinical trials of a few promising drug candidates. If all goes well, some of those first pills could be ready by the end of the year. The Antiviral Program for Pandemics will also support research on entirely new drugs — not just for the coronavirus, but for viruses that could cause future pandemics.

A number of other viruses, including influenza, H.I.V. and hepatitis C, can be treated with a simple pill. But despite more than a year of research, no such pill exists to treat someone with a coronavirus infection before it wreaks havoc. Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s program for accelerating Covid-19 research, invested far more money in the development of vaccines than of treatments, a gap that the new program will try to fill.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key backer of the program, said he looked forward to a time when Covid-19 patients could pick up antiviral pills from a pharmacy as soon as they tested positive for the coronavirus or develop Covid-19 symptoms.

“I wake up in the morning, I don’t feel very well, my sense of smell and taste go away, I get a sore throat,” Dr. Fauci said in an interview. “I call up my doctor and I say, ‘I have Covid and I need a prescription.’”

[neurodervish in reply to Harvist]

Thanks so much!

[country76 in reply to Harvist]

That is amazing!! I believe that is part of the answer. It is the treatment. We are being bombarded with new varients. I wonder what drug company is making it?

[LeoPa]

I just read an article yesterday in our local newspaper saying that the Delta variant manifests differently than the previous versions of the virus. It does not take away the smell and taste so often and it presents on most occasions in younger people as just a bad case of congested nose. That is why it is spreading so fast. 1 person infects 8 others. They don't suspect they have covid.