--- title: Merck’s COVID-19 Drug Cuts Hospitalizations and Deaths by Half description: The experimental oral antiviral treatment is still being studied, but could protect people who get sick with COVID-19. canonical: https://time.com/6103345/merck-covid-19-drug/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-10-01T14:36:48.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:03:44.854Z article:section: Health og:title: Merck’s COVID-19 Drug Cuts Hospitalizations and Deaths by Half og:description: The experimental oral antiviral treatment is still being studied, but could protect people who get sick with COVID-19. og:url: https://time.com/6103345/merck-covid-19-drug/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3fcc6f60a4f826a6/698a1d60656a3f9cc0bdbada/molnupiravir-merck-covid-e1633098830320.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1600 og:image:height: 900 og:image:alt: molnupiravir-merck-covid og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Merck’s COVID-19 Drug Cuts Hospitalizations and Deaths by Half twitter:description: The experimental oral antiviral treatment is still being studied, but could protect people who get sick with COVID-19. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3fcc6f60a4f826a6/698a1d60656a3f9cc0bdbada/molnupiravir-merck-covid-e1633098830320.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Merck’s COVID-19 Antiviral Drug Cuts Hospitalizations and Deaths by Half > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Making the COVID-19 Vaccine: A 50,000 step process [Watch (HLS stream): Making the COVID-19 Vaccine: A 50,000 step process](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/XGIqdw9j.m3u8) (7:28)  _Published 2021-04-18. Inside BioNTech's quest to vaccinate the world_  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Oct 1, 2021 2:36 PM UTC  An experimental COVID-19 treatment pill called molnupiravir being developed by Merck & Co Inc and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP. An experimental COVID-19 treatment pill called molnupiravir being developed by Merck & Co Inc and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP. Handout/Merck & Co Inc/Reuters  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Oct 1, 2021 2:36 PM UTC Vaccines will be the way out of the pandemic, but not everyone around the world is [immunized](https://time.com/collection/coronavirus-vaccines-updates/) yet, and the shots aren’t 100% effective in protecting people from getting infected with the COVID-19 virus. So antiviral drug treatments will be key to making sure that people who do get infected don’t get severely ill. Merck [announced](https://www.merck.com/news/merck-and-ridgebacks-investigational-oral-antiviral-molnupiravir-reduced-the-risk-of-hospitalization-or-death-by-approximately-50-percent-compared-to-placebo-for-patients-with-mild-or-moderat/) encouraging results form a study of its COVID-19 antiviral drug, molnupiravir. In an early look at the data from a Phase 3 study, the company said the drug lowered the risk of hospitalization or death by 50% in those taking the pills compared to people not getting the drug after they developed mild to moderate COVID-19\. Twenty-nine days after getting the drug or placebo, 7.3% of those receiving molnupiravir were hospitalized or died compared to 14.1% of people getting placebo. The drug is the first oral antiviral against COVID-19, and is meant to be prescribed for people who develop symptoms of COVID-19 but are not sick enough to require hospitalization. [Remdesivir](https://time.com/5840207/coronavirus-treatment-remdesivir/), the first medication [approved](https://time.com/5903121/remdesivir-fda-covid-19/) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat the disease, is meant for people hospitalized with COVID-19 and has to be administered intravenously. The three other antiviral drugs that have received emergency use authorization (EUA) are also given via IV. Based on the strongly positive results, Merck is stopping the trial early since the drug shows clear benefit. Merck will submit an application for EUA of the drug to the FDA and other regulatory bodies around the world soon. The analysis involved 775 patients from trial sites around the world, who took the pill or a placebo twice a day for five days. Molnupiravir works by blocking SARS-CoV-2 from copying its genetic material, which it needs to do in order to infect more cells. Because it likely targets basic mechanisms that the virus relies on to replicate, and not the parts that mutate to form new variants, the early preclinical and human studies also showed that the drug is effective against different variants of the virus. According to a release from the company, Merck has already been manufacturing molnupiravir, in the hopes that the Phase 3 study would show it was both safe and efficacious. The company has already agreed to provide 1.7 million doses of molnupiravir to the U.S. government, pending authorization from the FDA. Merck has also entered into licensing agreements with generic manufacturers to make the drug for more than 100 low- and middle-income countries if it receives authorization there. --- ### More from TIME --- ## Transcript Kind: captions Language: en oh yes yes i'm vaccinated yes Very cool yes yeah yes, I did it was very cool to to know okay I'm gonna be vaccinated with a vaccine that I know really from day one I mean who can tell that they're part of the solution for such a pandemic situation I guess only a few people can say that and I'm really happy to be part of that If you've been vaccinated for COVID-19, chances are that you are benefiting from the science happening here at the German biotech company BioNtech. In December 2020 BioNtech in partnership with Pfizer were the first to earn authorization to distribute their vaccine to the public In March 2021 TIME spent a week watching how BioNtech makes a batch of 8 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at their new manufacturing plant in Marburg they expect to produce 1 billion doses a year the pace of production has been breakneck from the start So in 2020 I think we worked at every holiday, I can remember Easter Saturday I was standing here pipetting samples to have the results as soon as possible and now 24-hour shifts in this lab are producing vaccines that will be shipped around the world There are approximately 50, 000 steps at the lab it begins with bags of pure mRNA the molecule that tells cells how to make the proteins that launch the immune response and a buffer solution that starts the coding process it emerges in bulk at the other end of the process as a liquid destined for vials most of the machines are named after the engineers that developed the process this one is named after Margaret the first patient in the clinical trials to receive the vaccine but the beating heart of the lab is this machine a container that uses pressurized ethanol to encase the mRNA and special lipid nanoparticles those nanoparticles keep the mRNA protected until it can jumpstart the immune response in the body's cells Speed is essential but inside the lab everyone moves slowly and methodically each of the 50,000 steps is logged by one technician confirmed by a second and only then does it actually happen it's very important that the quality of the product and all the raw materials is perfect here and so no impurities should be present in all raw materials and nothing which we don't want to have in our products one wrong move has the potential to damage the final product if there's any accidental exposure let's say from an ill-timed sneeze the entire batch must be thrown out, all eight million doses that's why everyone wears layers of protection and they even disinfect their gloved hands repeatedly in the lab where we were filming no one had ever told the technicians how many doses were in a batch after that they sprayed another application of disinfectant onto their gloves just to be sure based on our technology and on the antigen we were using no I wasn't I'm very confident in the technology we have until now vaccine development has been a slow process the BioNtech vaccine uses a new technology based on mRNA it is revolutionizing the way vaccines can be produced When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, BioNtech was primarily a cancer vaccine company but by using this new mRNA technology it was able to quickly pivot to a coronavirus vaccine when you look back at any project you've ever done you've always looked back at the start and go wow okay if I'd known that now i could have cut you know a few hurdles out of my way earlier right but you're in a situation where you're doing something especially for us as a smaller company that was unprecedented the second part of the process happens at another factory where vials are filled and packed into boxes for shipment as the cycle comes to an end there's little time to celebrate after all another batch is waiting to be made ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6103345/merck-covid-19-drug/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6103345/merck-covid-19-drug/"},"headline":"Merck’s COVID-19 Antiviral Drug Cuts Hospitalizations and Deaths by Half","datePublished":"2021-10-01T14:36:48.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:03:44.854Z","description":"The experimental treatment is still being studied, but could protect people who get sick with 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