On Thursday, British regulators approved the experimental drug Molnupiravir from U.S. pharmaceutical giant Merck, marking the first time an oral antiviral treatment for Covid-19 in adults has been approved by a public health body.

The Molnupiravir tablet will be administered twice a day to patients who have just been diagnosed with the disease, BBC reported.

The medication, which was originally created to treat the flu, was found to reduce the risk of hospitalization or fatal outcome by roughly half in clinical trials.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, called the medication a "gamechanger" for the "the frailest and immunosuppressed."

"Today is a historic day for our country, as the UK is now the first country in the world to approve an antiviral that can be taken at home for Covid," said Javid.

First oral COVID-19 medicine

Molnupiravir is the first specific oral antiviral medicine for Covid, developed by Merck, Sharp, Dohme (MSD), and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics in the United States.

The pill works by inhibiting an enzyme that the virus uses to replicate itself, causing faults in its genetic code. This should halt the virus's growth, lowering viral levels in the body and reducing disease severity.

According to Merck, this technique should make the treatment as effective against new viral varieties as they emerge in the future.

The medicine has been approved for use in people with mild to moderate Covid and at least one risk factor for developing severe illness, such as obesity, old age, diabetes, or heart disease, according to the UK regulator, the MHRA.

US government has made an advance purchase of 1.7 million courses

The UK has placed an order for 480,000 courses of Molnupiravir to be delivered by the end of the year, as well as 250,000 courses of a comparable experimental drug being developed by Pfizer in the United States. The contract's value has not been disclosed by the UK government.

The US government, on the other hand, has made an advance purchase of 1.7 million courses of the medication for $1.2 billion, or around $700 (£513) per course.

Clinical tests results

BBC reports that Clinical investigations of Molnupiravir on 775 patients who had recently contracted Covid revealed the following:

• 7.3 % of individuals who received the drug were hospitalized.
• In comparison, 14.1 % of people who were given a placebo or dummy tablet did not need hospitalization.
• There were no deaths in the Molnupiravir group, however, eight patients in the placebo group eventually died of Covid.