PARIS, March 3, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - The World Health Organization on Wednesday
recommended an anti-Covid pill be taken by sufferers who have mild symptoms
but are at high risk of hospitalisation, such as older people or the
unvaccinated.

  The pill, called molnupiravir and developed by US pharmaceutical Merck, is
taken as soon as possible after Covid-19 symptoms develop and then for the
following five days.

  A WHO group of experts said in the British Medical Journal that people with
weak immune systems or chronic disease were also recommended to take the pill
if they had non-severe Covid.

  However "young and healthy patients, including children, and pregnant and
breastfeeding women should not be given the drug due to potential harms,"
they said.

  The UN agency's new recommendation was based on the results of six
randomised controlled trials involving 4,796 patients, the "largest dataset
on this drug so far".

  The trials suggested that molnupiravir reduced the risk of going to
hospital, with 43 fewer admissions per 1,000 high-risk patients, as well as
speeding up the pace at which symptoms cleared up by an average of 3.4 days.

  There was less indication it had an affect on mortality, with just six
fewer deaths per 1,000 patients.

  The WHO acknowledged "that cost and availability issues associated with
molnupiravir may make access to low- and middle-income countries challenging
and exacerbate health inequity".

  While vaccines remain the foremost tools in the fight against the pandemic,
experts have welcomed the addition of the new oral treatments, which inhibit
the virus' ability to replicate and should withstand variants.

  The only other main anti-Covid pill available is Pfizer's Paxlovid.

  However more potential concerns have been raised about Merck's pill, which
the US Food and Drug Administration has not authorised for under-18s because
it could affect bone and cartilage growth.