Sept 1 (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N) announced on Wednesday new trials of their experimental oral antiviral drugs for COVID-19 as the race to develop an easy-to-administer treatment for the potentially fatal illness heats up.

Pfizer said its latest mid-to-late-stage trial will enroll 1,140 non-hospitalized adults diagnosed with coronavirus infection who are not at risk of severe illness. Patients in the trial will be given Pfizer's pill, known as PF-07321332, and a low dose of ritonavir, an older medication widely used in combination treatments for HIV infection.

Pfizer's drug is designed to block the activity of a key enzyme that is needed for the coronavirus to multiply.

Merck said its new trial will study experimental drug molnupiravir for the prevention of COVID-19 among adults in the same household as someone diagnosed with symptomatic coronavirus infection. Merck and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics are already conducting a late-stage trial of the treatment in non-hospitalized patients to see if it reduces the risk of hospitalization or death.

Merck said Friday that an experimental pill it is developing with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics reduced the risk of hospitalization or death from COVID-19 by around 50% in a clinical trial.

Why it matters: An oral antiviral drug designed to prevent or treat COVID-19 could be a key tool to combat the pandemic, since not all people will get vaccinated and because it will take potentially years to vaccinate people in certain countries around the world.

Merck said it will apply for an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration "as soon as possible" to begin distributing molnupiravir because of the results.
It will also submit applications to international regulatory agencies.

MOUNT DORA, Fla. - A dramatic video shows a Florida man forcing an alligator into a garbage bin.

"Let me know when the head goes inside. Let me know! Somebody let me know when the head goes inside!" Eugene Bozzi is heard shouting.

"The weight of him was heavier than I thought he was," Bozzi said, "so I was thinking he kind of heavy, and then when I got him in there he was real strong, felt like a person was inside trying to hit the top trying to get out and I waited for him to calm down and it was done."

Trapper Isaac Rempe, with Affordable Wildlife Removal, says by doing this, Bozzi put himself and others in danger.

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a new surgeon general for Florida on Tuesday, a Harvard-trained doctor who advocated for an approach to the coronavirus pandemic that emphasizes protecting individual rights over community-based precautions.

Dr. Joseph Ladapo, a UCLA researcher who expressed skepticism that vaccines could help end the pandemic, said Tuesday that he would “reject fear” as a public health strategy.

“The state should be promoting good health, and vaccination isn’t the only path for that,” Ladapo said. “It’s been treated almost like a religion, and that’s just senseless.”

He said the state should be supporting many measures for good health: “vaccination, losing weight, exercising more (and) eating more fruits and vegetables.”

TALLAHASSEE — Attorneys for the Florida Department of Health, school boards and parties such as the NAACP battled Thursday about whether Surgeon General Scott Rivkees should give a deposition in a legal fight over the state’s efforts to prevent school mask mandates.

Administrative Law Judge Brian Newman held a nearly hour-long hearing as the department seeks a protective order to block Rivkees from having to testify in challenges to an Aug. 6 rule issued by the health agency. The rule required that parents be able to “opt out” their children from any school mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

School boards in Broward, Alachua, Orange, Miami-Dade and Leon counties and other parties, including the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, have challenged the rule. Their attorneys want to question Rivkees, who, as surgeon general, heads the Department of Health and signed the rule.

At least in part, they contend that the effort to prevent mask requirements in schools conflicts with past statements by Rivkees about masks helping curb the spread of COVID-19.

The Hillsborough County Republican Party alerted federal election regulators Tuesday that it may file its monthly campaign finance reports late because a key member of the organization died Saturday from COVID-19.

Prior to his death, Gregg Prentice developed and maintained software that electronically tracked donations to the Hillsborough County GOP and supplied data for the organization’s monthly finance reports. None of the other officers knew how to operate Prentice’s software, the party told the the Federal Elections Commission.

“We will be struggling to get all of this entered in the proper format by our deadline on September20, but we will try to do so with our best effort,” the party wrote.

For the better part of a decade, the cause Prentice took up was Florida’s election systems. Armed with analysis gleaned from self-sorted voter databases, he often levied severe accusations at local election supervisors, especially in Democratic counties. That work at times drew the attention of national conservative organizations and Republican lawmakers, who periodically consulted Prentice when writing voting laws, Wood said.

Sixty years ago tomorrow the largest clinical trial in history began. On April 26, 1954, thousands of U.S. schoolchildren rolled up their sleeves to take Jonas Salk’s inactivated poliovirus vaccine. Newspapers reported that Randall Kerr of McClean, Virginia, was the first child in the trial to get the shot. (Thousands of others in earlier stages of research had received the vaccine, including Salk’s wife and children.)

The 1954 trial was blinded, meaning that the children didn’t know whether they received the vaccine or a saline placebo injection. Regardless, most viewed themselves if not exactly as test subjects (which they certainly were) but as Polio Pioneers, as they and their parents were encouraged to think of them. About 1.3 million first- second- and third-graders participated in the trial as vaccine recipients (about 422,000), placebo recipients (about 201,000), and observed control subjects (about 725,000) (see the official report on the trial for details on the study design). About nine months after the trial ended, Thomas Francis, MD, announced in April 1955 that the vaccine group had significantly fewer cases of polio than the control groups, and the vaccine was licensed.

Over the past few years, scores of participants in the 1954 vaccine trials have posted comments on this blog. Many participants recall being afraid both of getting the shots and of getting polio, and many remember friends and family members who became ill with polio. Memory can be tricky: several people remembered getting the polio “drops” in this trial – though the oral vaccine, in liquid form, would not be used for several more years. They were probably revaccinated with the oral vaccine later because of its better immunogenicity.

Most of the participants I’ve corresponded with take pride in their role in the trial. But some of them question the methods used to enroll children in the trial and remark on the changes we’ve seen since the 1950s in the ethical considerations that guide medical research.

As a growing number of school districts defy a state order against mask mandates, Florida’s public universities are showing no desire to mount their own rebellion.

Repeatedly in recent days, university leaders have pushed aside calls for safety measures like mask mandates, stronger action to encourage vaccinations, or the ability to temporarily teach online. Faculty groups, meanwhile, have been voicing fears about multiplying coronavirus cases with a deepening sense of outrage.

University officials say the state has legally tied their hands from taking stronger action. But they have declined to explain exactly what rules or laws prevent them from challenging the state like many school districts have.

The issue surfaced Aug. 24 at the University of South Florida during a tense exchange between two members of the board of trustees. Trustee Tim Boaz, who heads the Faculty Senate, lamented in a meeting that USF hadn’t taken stronger steps against the virus.