Pfizer on Wednesday announced it has begun the Phase 2 and 3 stages of its study into the use of its\u00a0antiviral COVID-19 treatment in young children.<\/p>\n
The oral COVID-19 treatment called Paxlovid is currently one\u00a0of two\u00a0authorized\u00a0SARS-CoV-2 antiviral treatments in the U.S. It is\u00a0permitted for use in people as young as 12 who weigh at least\u00a040 kg (88 lbs).<\/p>\n
\u201cSince the beginning of the pandemic, more than 11 million children under the age of 18 in the United States alone have tested positive for COVID-19, representing nearly 18% of reported cases and leading to more than 100,000 hospital admissions,” Mikael Dolsten,\u00a0Pfizer’s chief scientific officer, said.<\/p>\n
“There is a significant unmet need for outpatient treatments that can be taken by children and adolescents to help prevent progression to severe illness, including hospitalization or death.”<\/p>\n
The trial:\u00a0<\/strong>Pfizer’s trial will include about 140 participants under the age of 18. The participants will be split into two groups of participants between the ages of 6 and 17. One group will be of participants weighing at least 88 lbs, and the other will be of participants weighing between 44 and 88 lbs.<\/p>\n The pharmaceutical company said it was also working on an antiviral treatment for participants under the age of 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pfizer on Wednesday announced it has...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45852,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45851\/revisions\/45852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}