At last, a pill that can prevent COVID after exposure to infected people

Nature ^ | May 13, 2026 | Elie Dolgin

[Red Badger]

An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus at home, according to trial results published today in the New England Journal of Medicine1.

The drug could be a lifeline for those who still face real danger from the virus, such as care-home residents or transplant recipients on immune-suppressing medication.

The advance arrives years after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, so the real-world impact might be felt by only a narrow band of individuals. Still, “as a 78-year-old with comorbidities, I certainly would use it if I had a known exposure”, says study co-author Frederick Hayden, a clinical virologist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville.

Antiviral antidote The drug, called ensitrelvir, is made by the Japanese pharmaceutical company Shionogi. It blocks an enzyme that coronaviruses need to make new copies of themselves, hitting the same target as one of the two active ingredients in Pfizer’s antiviral Paxlovid. But whereas that ingredient, nirmatrelvir, failed to prevent household infections in trials2, ensitrelvir has come through.

In an international study of more than 2,000 household contacts conducted from June 2023 to September 2024, about 9% of people who got a placebo within 72 hours of a housemate developing symptoms became symptomatic themselves, compared with only about 3% of those who got a five-day course of ensitrelvir. Rates of viral transmission were lower in the ensitrelvir group, too: confirmed infections, symptomatic or not, turned up in only 14.0% of those who received the drug, compared with 21.5% of those who got a placebo.

The therapy generally proved tolerable, without the taste-related side effects often seen with Paxlovid and, overall, similar toxicity as the placebo.

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Education; Health/Medicine; Society
KEYWORDS:

[Red Badger]

Xocova (ensitrelvir) has been approved for COVID-19 prevention in Japan on the basis of promising trial results.Credit: The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images/Alamy

[BusterDog]

I’m not taking that.

[Craftmore]

lets try ivermectin first , at this point i trust nobody.

[TigersEye]

Sounds like they’ve come up with a pharmaceutical strategy that could be applied to other similar viruses with a little tweaking to fit them. That would be wonderful.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

What is really needed is a pill to prevent COVID-1984 after exposure to the COVID-1984 mRNA vaccine.

[Celerity]

But..but... The vaccines!

I thought they were safe and effective?

\s

[fireman15]

[Fai Mao]

Look at the alphabet in that picture. A real “Lerning Center.”

[Jet Jaguar]

Good eyes.

[fireman15]

A real “Lerning Center.”

Don't you mean “Learing Center”?

I saw th egoofy alphabet when the image was generated. I could have corrected it easily but thought that it fit the situation better the way that it was.

[FamiliarFace]

*** The therapy generally proved tolerable, without the taste-related side effects often seen with Paxlovid***

I took Paxlovid the first time I had CoVid. Never again. That stuff was awful.

[Georgia Girl 2]

So will Ivermectin.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Mega thread of evidence showing covid “vaccines” cause turbo cancers

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4297730/posts

[SpaceBar]

The journal Nature is ‘compromised’ in my book.

[Myrddin]

The mode of action of Paxlovid was targeting the MCP enzyme that cleaves a long peptide with multiple proteins at the furin cleavage site. The suppression of MCP meant a build-up of long, uncleaved peptides accrued as long as Paxlovid was taken to suppress the enzyme. When Paxlovid was discontinued, the MCP enzyme returned and processed the huge backlog of poly-protein peptides into functional subunits. That was the famous Paxlovid "rebound". It was never a fix. Just a "pause" button.

[grame]

I’ll pass. No thank you.

[lee martell]

#1. Those are huge tablets, real Horse Pills!
One may need to break up and pulverize first.

#2. The Painting itself. I never cease to admire and be amazed at the enormous talent of Mr. Norman Rockwell.
Most painters are either naturally good at hard line subjects, such as floorboards, furniture and letters.
While others excel in Soft or Curvilinear subjects, such as animals, people or objects found in nature.

Rockwell was an expert at both types of subject.
His results never looked overworked or labored.
He also knew a great deal about the effects of lighting, warm, cool or neutral. One of a kind!

[A strike]

I’ll also go with Ivermectin, but
I trust the Japanese a hell of a lot more than the USG ..

[fireman15]

The Painting itself. I never cease to admire and be amazed at the enormous talent of Mr. Norman Rockwell.

I assume you realize that I prompted Google Gemini to generate an AI image using Nano Banana in the Rockwell's style. I am a fan of this genre as well. And Gemini does what I consider a good job of creating images in his style.

[lee martell]

I didn’t know that was a concoction of AI, but the freshness of all the colors did catch me by surprise. I figured somebody used some type of filter to refresh all the hues.