Pfizer and its rivals, including US-based Merck & Co Inc and Swiss pharmaceutical Roche Holding AG, are racing to produce the first antiviral pill that people could take at early signs of the illness. Reuters
In early 2020, as a new deadly coronavirus began spreading around the world, Pfizer Inc assembled what it called a SWAT team of scientists and chemists to identify a potential treatment to fight Covid-19.
The US pharmaceutical giant, which had begun exploring a vaccine, also wanted to produce a pill that could stop the infection from progressing, similar to how the widely-used Tamiflu drug fights influenza. The team scoured Pfizers library of molecules looking for unused compounds to help jumpstart the process and quickly identified a promising candidate.