Pfizer's CEO Says COVID-19 Oral Drug May Be Ready Next Year

Amidst the news of the surges in the cases of coronavirus in India, and the world, Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer has announced that the company is working to make two antivirals available next year. They will be in oral and injectable forms.

"We are actually on two, one is injectable and the other one an oral (antiviral)... Particularly the attention is on the oral for the world and of us because it provides several advantages and one of them is that you don't need to go to the hospital to get the treatment of which is the case with all the injectables so far but you can get it home," Albert Bourla told CNBC in an interview on Tuesday.

"If all goes well, and we implement the same speed that we are, and if regulators do the same, and they are, I hope that by the end of the year," he added.

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Remdesivir, manufactured by Gilead Sciences, is the only antiviral officially approved for use against the coronavirus. After receiving emergency use authorisation in May of last year, the US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) gave the drug full approval in October.

He also stated that the medication could be "way more effective against the multiple variants" of the virus than current options adding that the mechanism of action, of the antiviral, is not expected to be subject to mutations, "particularly because it's not acting on the spike, as we all know, all the mutations that we are hearing right now are seeing this in the proteins of the spike."

Currently, there are studies underway to understand the effectiveness of these antivirals on the various mutations that are being discovered around the world. Bourla said that one can expect more news around the summer.

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