Pfizer’s New Drug to Treat Covid-19

As co-chair of the Bioscience Caucus and a supporter of bioscience and pharmaceutical sciences, I applaud the just-announced FDA Emergency Use Authorization of Pfizer’s CT based research and development laboratory in discovering an oral antiviral treatment, called PAXLOVID (nirmatrelvir [PF-07321332] tablets and ritonavir tablets). This breakthrough medication is designed to mitigate the dangerous symptoms of COVID-19 in pill-form to save lives and mitigate devastating and potentially deadly results.

Once again, Connecticut’s own Pfizer is on the forefront of innovation and medical breakthroughs in the effort to eradicate COVID-19. PAXLOVID tablets were developed in the Groton, CT research and development laboratory and underwent their first clinical trials in New Haven. This landmark bioscience achievement is an uplifting indicator that CT’s bioscience industry and scientists are constantly thinking through new solutions to enable us to begin to cope with and ultimately ‘beat’ this pandemic instead of placing our lives on hold while hoping for this to pass. Pfizer was first to develop the COVID-19 vaccine, and now they are first to take the next step to help reduce the dangerous and devastating pandemic health risks. I am incredibly grateful and optimistic for us to have another available tool to manage COVID-19 infections and variants.”

Albert Bourla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer offered in a written statement upon FDA EUA approval, “Today’s authorization of PAXLOVID represents another tremendous example of how science will help us ultimately defeat this pandemic, which, even two years in, continues to disrupt and devastate lives  across the world. This breakthrough therapy, which has been shown to significantly reduce hospitalizations and deaths and can be taken at home, will change the way we treat COVID-19, and  hopefully help reduce some of the significant pressures facing our healthcare and hospital systems. Pfizer stands ready to begin delivery  in the U.S. immediately to help get PAXLOVID into the hands of appropriate patients as quickly as possible.”

Data updates on testing in Connecticut

The Office of the Governor provided the following updates as of 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 22, 2021:

The following is a summary of the day-to-day newly reported data on cases and tests in Connecticut. It is important to note that these newly reported updates include data that occurred over the last several days to a week. All data in this report are preliminary, and data for previous dates will be updated as new reports are received and data errors are corrected.

Of the 821 patients currently hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, 619 (75.4%) are not fully vaccinated.

For the week beginning December 5, 2021, unvaccinated persons had a 5.5x greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 compared to fully vaccinated persons.

For the week beginning December 5, 2021, unvaccinated persons had a 20.1x greater risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to fully vaccinated persons.

Data on COVID-19 associated deaths is updated once per week every Thursday. The most recently reported total number of deaths is 9,002.

County-by-county breakdown of current COVID-19 hospitalizations:

For a series of interactive graphs and maps that provide additional data, including metrics related to age, gender, and race/ethnicity, as well as data broken down by every town and city in Connecticut, visit ct.gov/coronavirus and click the link that is labeled, “Data Tracker.”