Public Radio For Eastern North Carolina 89.3 WTEB New Bern 88.5 WZNB New Bern 91.5 WBJD Atlantic Beach 90.3 WKNS Kinston 88.5 WHYC Swan Quarter 89.9 W210CF Greenville
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Greenville residents can now listen to PRE News & Ideas on 89.9 FM
US

COVID-19 antiviral drugs could save lives — but will Americans be able to access them?

New York's Tenement Museum. (Robin Young/Here & Now)
New York's Tenement Museum. (Robin Young/Here & Now)

There’s an emerging new tool in the kit to fight COVID-19: anti-viral pills with great promise to make cases milder, avoiding hospitalizations and deaths.

The two antivirals — from Merck and Pfizer — are pending authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. If authorized for emergency use, the pills should largely be free to patients. But will it be easy to access them?

Lev Facher, Washington correspondent at STAT, explains.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

US