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Covid-19, but there are also some safety concerns. senior medical correspondent elizabeth cohen is joining us now with new cnn reporting. what are these safety concerns, elizabeth? >> so, brianna, when the fda advisers meet one week from today to look at merck's anti-viral pill, they'll be looking at efficacy and safety. i think there's going to be more discussion about safety. that's really because the efficacy is, as one doctor put it to me, quite dramatic. let's look at efficacy, then we'll talk about the safety in a sec. 762 participants, early stage covid, first five days of symptom onset...

Treat people in very early stage covid, they were so good that the folks who were monitoring the trial said, you know what, let's stop it so that these folks, so pfizer can go to the fda and try to get authorization. that's how good the results are. that doesn't happen very hoofte. but it happened with this antiviral and the antiviral that merck applied for emergency use authorization for. it may be in the future we could have two antivirals to treat covid, which would be amazing, especially since these are pills. let's look at the results from this pfizer trial. what they found was they had 7...

I'm talking early stage covid, not in the hospital, but they're tricky to administer. there are monoclonal ant bibodi, and this would be easier if doctors could prescribe a pill, call it into the pharmacy for those with early symptoms. merck has put it out in a press release. it's not been published or peer reviewed. they said they had a clinical trial of 762 participants, again, early stage covid, not in the hospital, and half of them got a placebo, a pill that does nothing. of those folks when they followed them, 45 ended up in the hospital and 8 died. the folk who is got the actual antivira...

Drugmaker says cuts hospitalizations and death by half in those with early symptoms. elizabeth cohen, a lot of signs for optimism, but experts like dr. anthony fauci are warning we shouldn't prematurely be celebrating. >> that's right. because, boris, if you can remember just a few months ago, sort of the end of may, beginning of june, we were celebrating a little bit, then delta variant happened. please, god, we will not have another variant like that come around, but we need to be careful. people need to get vaccinated and be sensible about the kinds of activities and the kinds of things the...

Had a positive covid test only in the past five days so very, very early on. none of them were in the hospital. it was more than 700 participants. half of them got the antiviral drug and about half got the place bow, the drug that does nothing, and for the placebo folks, 45 of them were hospitalized over the next month and eight of them died. the folks who got the antiviral drug, only 28 were hospitalized and zero died, so as you can see, that is a substantial difference, and one note here, there is another drug that's out there for early stage covid. it's monoclonal antibodies, for example, r...