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Pills used to treat COVID-19 symptoms after infection could be available by the end of the year, U.S. health officials announced Thursday.
A new program was announced by the Department of Health and Human Services known as the Antiviral Program for Pandemics. The program will help speed up clinical trials of potential drugs that can be used to treat COVID-19 symptoms.
Should the drugs be approved in the clinical trials, they may start to be available by the end of the year.
Dr. Anthony Fauci hopes for the drugs to be used when COVID patients first test positive for the virus or develop symptoms.
"I wake up in the morning, I don't feel very well, my sense of smell and taste go away, I get a sore throat," Fauci said in an interview. "I call up my doctor and I say, 'I have Covid and I need a prescription.'"
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below:
The United States is devoting $3.2 billion to advance development of antiviral pills for COVID-19, officials said Thursday.
Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, announced the investment during a White House briefing as part of a new "antiviral program for pandemics" to develop drugs to address symptoms caused by potentially dangerous viruses like the coronavirus.
The pills, which would be used to minimize symptoms after infection, are in development and could begin arriving by year's end, pending the completion of clinical trials.
Fauci said the new program would invest in "accelerating things that are already in progress" for COVID-19, but also work to innovate new therapies for other viruses.
"There are few treatments that exist for many of the viruses that have pandemic potential," said Fauci.
But he added, "vaccines clearly remain the centerpiece of our arsenal."
News of the administration's plans for the pill was first reported Thursday by The New York Times.
