Two new oral medicines for Covid-19 are poised for widespread use, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Both Pfizer and Merck have recently revealed promising data on oral medicines for early Covid-19 infection, with both companies on the threshold of widespread use of the drugs. Brian Garibaldi, a critical care medicine expert at Johns Hopkins, says he hopes people don’t see these new medicines as a reason to forgo vaccination.

Garibaldi: I have lost the ability to predict how people are going to respond to different therapies, and the reason I say this is that there are many people who were not willing to get vaccinated but have no problem taking a monoclonal antibody. If you’re going to follow the science, millions and millions of people have gotten the different mRNA vaccines, and the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. It doesn’t make sense to choose to forgo a vaccine, take the risk of getting ill and if you get ill I’m going to take this other therapy that’s also brand new for Covid that’s been tested on less people.  :27

Garibaldi says these new oral medicines have even less of a record, so vaccination is still the best strategy to protect yourself and others. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.