Britain must find a further 6,000 people to trial Merck’s (Coronavirus) COVID-19 antiviral pill to gauge how best to roll it out on a larger scale, Reuters reported.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approved the pill, named molnupiravir, in November, but the government is trying to establish the best way to use the drug in a largely vaccinated population after being trialed via a national study on unvaccinated citizens.
The health ministry said it purchased 2.23mln courses of the pill, as well as 2.75mln of peer's Pfizer’s similar drug, despite only having 4,500 participants signed up to date.
The pill, made by Merck and Ridgeback Therapeutics, reduced hospitalisations and deaths by approximately 30% in a clinical trial of high-risk individuals at the early stages of the virus.
"Getting people enrolled onto this study is vital, not just in protecting the most vulnerable now, but in ensuring we can deploy these medicines more widely as soon as possible," Eddie Gray, chair of the UK's Antivirals Taskforce, said.