Antiviral Pill To Treat COVID Could Be Ready This Year

The New York Times reports:

The U.S. government spent more than $18 billion last year funding drugmakers to make a Covid vaccine, an effort that lead 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.

Read the full article.

Is there a pill we could take to cure Covid-19? The US government is setting up a $3.2 billion program to find out. Here’s my @nytimes story on a major new initiative and why the search for a covid antiviral has been disappointing till now. https://t.co/zEILbycWcW

— Carl Zimmer (@carlzimmer) June 17, 2021