It's Monday, March one. I'm Oscar and Mirrors from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. The COVID pill made by Merk has been prescribed heavily, despite some concerns. Regulators and doctors think that the Mirk pill should be one of the last options in treating COVID because of concerns that it could cause birth defects and cause more variance to form. But with Fiser's pill and limited supply, many doctors have turned to maul new Peravier.
Jared Hopkins, pharma reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for what to know about the Mirk covid anti viral. Thanks for joining us, Jared, Thanks for having me. Well, we're looking at what we got going so far as therapeutics for COVID nineteen. And there's two COVID pills out there right now, one from Fiser and one from MRK. You know, the Fiser one seems to be the pill of choice for doctors. They say that the Mark one should probably be used as a last resort, but what
we're seeing is it's getting heavy, heavy usage. Uh, just some concerns because just the limited supply of the fiser pill. So Jared, help us walk through some of this. What are we seeing and what do we know about this smirk covid pill. So the mirk pill is called monopure
viewer and the fiser pill is called tax lovid. And the main difference here, there's a couple of many differences, is that the mirk pill was shown in a clinical trial to be effective at reducing hospitalization and death, and the fiser pill was shown to be eight percent effective. But a big difference here is that and both pills were cleared for use back late last year. However, the fiser pill wasn't much much less supply. There is much
less supply of the fiser pill. And so when physicians and when providers found themselves amidst this omicron surge, even though the fiser pill was preferred and in fact recommended by authorities, the Mirk pill is what ended up being prescribed very often because it happened to be there in stock. And here we are in mid March, and the two pills are are pretty much neck and neck in prescriptions,
which is surprising to too many people. Yeah, the prescription numbers so seventy four thousand, over seventy four thousand for the mirk pill, seventy nine thousand for packs slovid the Fiser pill. So, just like you said, just neck and neck, but there are concerns with with both pills. So pack selvid the fiser one. I guess there's potential harm of mixing it with other medicines. Do we know what types
of medications would cause some problems with that one? Yeah, So there's a lot of common medications that people take that have potential to be safety risks if they are taking in combination or mixed with pack slovid. This can be just cholesterol controlling drugs, cholesterol lowering drugs commonly known as statins, but as well as certain kids need disease and liver disease drugs as well. So these individuals, these patients might not be able to take pack sloavid. It's
it's up to you know, with their doctor. However, what we've seen is that some of these interactions are actually manageable. So, for example, statins, for people who are taking statins, physicians are saying, hey, once you're done with you know, when you're taking pack sloavied, just pause your statin and take pack Slovid for those five days that pack Slobedes need to be taken, and then resume your statins after that.
So it's been a little bit manageable. But because of these interactions, there are still many patients who can't take pack sloaded and therefore then the physicians are prescribing them mountuper here. So mount of peer beer is also filling this hole for patients who might not be able to get or to take pack slogan. And there's also some concerns with the Merk pail to. One among them was that it could cause a higher frequency of virus mutation is because of the way the pill works. Some other
people said it could also cause birth defects. I hadn't heard that one. And they tell their male patients to, you know, either not have sex or use condoms for at least three months after the treatment. So, I mean, those are some interesting things I had not heard previously. So the merk drug actually works by inserting errors into the UH. It stops the virus by inserting errors into
the genetic code of the virus. However, what was found was that in animal testing was that the drug could cause birth defects and so as a result, it's not recommended for pregnant women or women of childbearing age or interested in becoming pregnant. And as a result, men who are prescribed it are recommended to use a contraception birth control for at least three months after taking the treatment.
You know that that has actually caused some positions that I talked to, that has caused some patients to forego that treatment, some men who with wented. So there are some concerns. The concerns from physicians are, hey, we've got a drug here that is effective, so not as effective as as another pillfis your one, and we have some risks here, so why not go with Paxlovian instead. And that is why paxlovid is is what is recommended by the FDA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Infectious
Disease Society of America. They say, go with pax that's the primary one. If that's not available, then recommend antibody treatments. If those aren't available or people can't take those, they even want you to take a different anti viral from Gilead. And if that's not available, then you get to monopere here. But in the meantime, you know, the government has already bought millions of courses of both paxelovid and and the monopervier,
so we're going to have stock of that. There's also the Test to Treat program that present by and has started with all of this. Basically, if you test positive at a pharmacy or clinic or whatever, you can be sent home with some pills. And as you mentioned you it was just in the absence of the pack selvid, the fiser pill, this other pill could be prescribed just as much as we've seen already. So just some interesting
things to know about all of this. Jared Hopkins farm a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us, Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out of the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us and I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.