U.S. to Spend $3.2 Billion on Antiviral Pills for COVID-19

🇺🇸@COVID19Up: On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the United States is devoting $3.2 billion to the development of antiviral pills to treat COVID-19.

The U.S. will invest $3.2 billion to develop antiviral pills for Covid-19, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday. Such a treatment could prevent hospitalization and potentially save lives as the virus becomes a perennial threat. https://t.co/KPEYZaEERm

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 17, 2021

The new program will invest billions of dollars in “accelerating things that are already in progress” for COVID-19, according to Dr. Fauci.

“There are few treatments that exist for many of the viruses that have pandemic potential,” Fauci said. But he added, “vaccines clearly remain the centerpiece of our arsenal.”

So far, the U.S. has approved only one antiviral drug for COVID-19, remdesivir, despite the WHO advising doctors against using it to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

The U.S. has also allowed emergency use of three experimental antibody therapies that help the immune system fight SARS-CoV-2.

Last week, the U.S. said it would purchase 1.7 million doses of an experimental antiviral drug, molnupiravir, for $1.2 billion from Merck if it is safe and effective.

In a public statement responding to the drug deal, Dr. Pierre Kory, Chief Medical Officer of the FLCCC Alliance, said that the U.S. is “going to commit $1.2 billion of taxpayer money in order to enrich Merck for a drug that is not yet available, which has already been the source of a whistleblower complaint, and which has already failed in hospitalized patients. We already have a drug (ivermectin) which is low cost, safe, widely available which has been proven to work in many phases of disease—not only as outpatients but in all patients.”