How Paxlovid came to be: From the germ of an idea to a vital tool against Covid

Charlotte Allerton, Pfizer’s head of medicine design, was making dinner — omelets — with her teenage children when she got a call from the one of company’s top development officers. He was calling with interim results from the study of an experimental antiviral for Covid-19.

She pushed the food to one side and went upstairs. “It’s like any piece of news that you’re expecting,” she said. “You can kind of tell just from the way the person speaks.”

She went directly to work.

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