Africa to Receive COVID-19 Pills Manufactured by Pfizer

ADF STAFF

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has signed a memorandum of understanding with U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer that will bring COVID-19 pills to the continent.

Pfizer’s Paxlovid pills are about 90% effective in preventing hospitalization and death from severe COVID-19 in patients who received them within three days of symptoms appearing. Africa CDC Director John Nkengasong announced the deal on March 10. The pills are intended for use by people with a high risk of serious illness.

Nkengasong urged African nations to continue using a combination of measures, including increased testing and treatments such as the Pfizer treatment, to combat COVID-19. The African Union’s legal office must sign off on the agreement before the pills are delivered.

“These molecules have a very unique role to play in a campaign to fight against this terrible pandemic,” Nkengasong said in an Al Jazeera report.

Paxlovid, an antiviral known as a protease inhibitor, disrupts the spread of COVID-19 by binding to an enzyme crucial to the virus’ function and reproduction, according to a Pharmaceutical Technology report. Because Paxlovid can be taken orally at home, experts expect the drug to reduce hospitalization rates in countries with health systems strained by the pandemic.

Patients using Paxlovid take three pills twice a day for five days. It is critical that patients begin treatment as soon as possible after experiencing coronavirus symptoms.

“Once you’ve been ill with the virus for more than a week, the damage done to the body in a severe case can’t be undone by the antiviral,” Dr. Jeffrey Topal, a Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist, said in a report on yalemedicine.org.

The Yale Medicine report said most people who take Paxlovid experience only mild side effects, such as altered sense of taste, diarrhea, muscle aches and increased blood pressure.

Dr. Scott Roberts, also an infectious disease expert at Yale, characterized Paxlovid as a “game-changer” in the battle against COVID-19.

“It’s really our first (effective) oral antiviral pill for this virus,” Roberts said in the yalemedicine.org report. “It shows clear benefit, and it really can prevent hospitalization and death in people who are at high risk.”

The pills could prove critical in combatting an expected fifth wave of COVID-19, which may hit South Africa by late April, according to

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

South African online news publication News24 that up to 12 million South Africans are susceptible to further infection because they don’t have prior immunity.

During a South African health care summit in March, Suliman and others foresaw a fifth and sixth COVID-19 wave. The fifth wave will likely be driven by a new variant that will overcome omicron as the nation’s dominant cause of infections, experts say. Each South African wave has been separated by about three months.

“But while there may likely be higher levels of infection, there are higher levels of immunity in the country,” Suliman told News24. “So, we hope to see less severe outcomes of hospitalizations and deaths going forward.”