AstraZeneca COVID-19 drug cuts the risk of severe severe disease or death by 50%, the pharma company said.
Merck and AstraZeneca have presented the AZD7442 drug.
The combination of the two antibodies raise hopes of bringing more treatments to market.
AZD7442 contains antibodies designed to linger in the body for months to contain the virus in case of an infection.
“An early intervention with our antibody can give a significant reduction in progression to severe disease, with continued protection for more than six months,” said Mene Pangalos, executive vice president at AstraZeneca.
“These positive results show that a convenient intramuscular dose of AZD7442 could play an important role in helping combat this devastating pandemic,” Hugh Montgomery, the trial’s principal investigator, said in a statement.
These therapies will be further used for emergency use in the United States for treating mild to moderate COVID-19.
AstraZeneca asked the US Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency use authorisation for AZD7442 as a preventative therapy.
AstraZeneca is submitting data from various AZD7442 studies to global health regulators, a spokeswoman said on Monday.
“We’ll be continuing discussions with regulators around this new data,” she said of Monday’s trial results.
A number of antibody cocktails have reduced the risk of severe disease or death for those who have Covid.
But, AstraZeneca’s is the first one to show a positive effect both in treatment and prevention in late-stage trials.
