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Thursday, December 16, 2021
Denmark becomes first in EU to authorize Merck COVID pill
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Denmark recommends US drugmaker Merck’s anti-COVID treatment molnupiravir for at-risk patients with symptoms, becoming the first EU country to do so.
The pill-based treatment, marketed under the name Lagevrio, was backed for emergency use by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in mid-November, allowing individual EU countries to decide for themselves whether to use the pills even before being formally authorized.
Lagevrio has been approved since November in the UK and is in the process of being approved in the US.
“We are recommending the pill treatment because we believe that the benefits outweigh the harms for those patients who are most at risk of becoming severely ill with COVID-19,” says Kirstine Moll Harboe at the Danish Health Authority. “At the same time we are fully aware that this is a new and unapproved treatment about which we do not yet have much knowledge.”
The Times of Israel Community.