U.S. to invest in COVID-19 treatments

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A bottle of remdesivir Associated Press/Photo by Zsolt Czegledi/MTI (file)

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday announced the country will spend $3.2 billion on the development of antiviral pills. The drugs could treat COVID-19 but also other dangerous viruses. Fauci said few treatments exist for viruses that could cause pandemics such as Ebola, dengue, West Nile, and Middle East respiratory syndrome.

What treatments are there? One antiviral, remdesivir, already has U.S. approval to treat COVID-19, but must be given intravenously. The U.S. previously said it would purchase 1.7 million doses of an experimental antiviral pill, molnupiravir, from Merck. Pfizer, Roche, and AstraZeneca are testing other antiviral drugs. So far, the United States has spent about half the amount of money on treatments for COVID-19 that it spent on vaccine development.

Dig deeper: Read reports from Dr. Charles Horton about other drugs being tried out against COVID-19: ivermectin and dexamethasone.

Rachel Lynn Aldrich

Rachel is a former assistant editor for WORLD Digital. She is a Patrick Henry College and World Journalism Institute graduate. Rachel resides with her husband in Wheaton, Ill.