President Biden announced the United States is buying 10 million courses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 treatment pill, in a $5.3 billion deal the President said is “critical” to fighting the pandemic.
While emphasizing that widely-available vaccines remain America’s “strongest tool” in the fight against Covid-19, Biden said the antiviral pill “could prove to be another critical tool in our arsenal that will accelerate our path out of the pandemic.”
Among newly-infected high risk patients treated within three days of the onset of symptoms, Pfizer’s pill has been shown to cut hospitalization or death by nearly 90 percent.