The effect of the drug, a five-day regimen designed to block the virus from making copies of itself, was found to be so strong midway through the study that an independent committee monitoring the clinical trial recommended it be stopped early. The data has not yet been published or peer-reviewed, but Pfizer said in a news release that it would submit the data to regulators “as soon as possible.”…

“This is amazing news. My overall feeling was relief — it’s been a long path,” said Annaliesa Anderson, the chief scientific officer of Pfizer’s bacterial vaccines and hospital medicine division, who leads the program to develop the drug. Anderson, who has been working on the medicine since January 2020, said it was a “heart-in-your-mouth moment” when she learned the news Wednesday night while driving to Massachusetts for college visits with her daughter.

“We’re looking at end-to-end protection and treatment,” Anderson said. “We have the vaccine for protection, and now we have an opportunity for treatment.”

Pfizer has already begun manufacturing the drug and projects producing more than 180,000 pill packs by the end of this year. The company is working to rapidly scale up manufacturing to at least 21 million packs in the first half of next year, with a total production of 50 million packs in 2022. The company did not disclose the price.