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As omicron surges, two new drugs approved to treat COVID-19 patients

As cases COVID-19 surge around the country, driven by the omicron variant, there’s some good news too. Two new treatments have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration — both of them pills shown to reduce serious illness, hospitalization and death among high-risk patients.

So what’s the difference between Merck’s Molnupiravir and Pfizer’s Paxlovid? And what other treatments are available as we head into the third year of the pandemic?

Here & Now‘s Celeste Headlee checks in with virologist Angela Rasmussen at the University of Saskatchewan.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.