When the vaccines against Covid-19 first started rolling out less than a year ago, there was widespread hope that it signaled the beginning of the end of the pandemic. As we head into another winter, however, things are much more uncertain than many people had hoped: As much as we might want to put the pandemic behind us, the delta surge and vaccine hesitancy have ensured that Covid-19 has lingered.

But there’s another new development on the horizon that, in combination with vaccines, might really be a game changer.

In recent months, researchers have made some advances in figuring out how to treat Covid-19 once you’ve contracted it. Of particular promise are medications available in a form that should be especially useful in the fight against the virus: pills. Pills are easy to store and ship, making them a more feasible option for worldwide distribution, and they don’t tax already overloaded hospital resources during a surge.

To understand why the development of anti-Covid pills is a big deal, think about how we’ve been able to treat Covid-19 thus far. In the nearly two years since this coronavirus started spreading, we’ve learned a lot about how to care for patients who are sick enough to require hospital care. Cheap, widely available drugs such as dexamethasone have substantially reduced the hospital mortality rate for severe Covid-19.

But there are fewer options for sick people who haven’t been hospitalized. The one outpatient treatment authorized for emergency use and widely available in the US is monoclonal antibodies, which work quite well but must be administered as either a single IV infusion or a series of four shots in a medical setting.

Uptake of monoclonal antibodies reportedly isn’t as high as it should be, and the treatment itself, while free to US patients, is pricey, costing the US government $2,100 per dose.

Read the full article about COVID-19 treatements by Kelsey Piper at Vox.