Seeking a pill to cure COVID-19: Drugmakers eye alternative to vaccines

Prevention is better than cure — but when it comes to COVID-19, what happens when people can't get the vaccine, don't want it or they're immunosuppressed and it fails to stop infection? The hunt is on for a coronavirus treatment that can be taken as a pill soon after a confirmed positive, halting the disease in its tracks so that cases that might have been severe end up being nothing more than a bad cold. Several companies are working on so-called oral antivirals, which would mimic what the drug Tamiflu does for influenza. 'It's great that we have vaccine rollout that has been significant, but it certainly will not be taken by everybody in our population, and not everybody who takes the vaccine will have a full response to it,' said David Hirschwerk, an infectious diseases physician at Northwell Health in New York.