Geneva : The World Health Organization said Friday it strongly recommended Pfizer’s Covid-19 antiviral pill Paxlovid for patients with milder forms of the disease who were still at a high risk of hospitalisation.
However the UN agency warned it was extremely concerned that the inequality in access seen with Covid vaccines would again leave low- and middle-income countries pushed to the end of the queue.
US pharma giant Pfizer’s combination of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir was the superior choice of treatment for unvaccinated, elderly or immunocompromised people with Covid, the WHO’s experts said in the BMJ medical journal.
For the same patients, the WHO also made a conditional (weak) recommendation of the antiviral drug remdesivir made by US biotech firm Gilead — which it had previously recommended against.
The WHO recommended Paxlovid over remdesivir, as well as over Merck’s molnupiravir pill and monoclonal antibodies.