The Challenges of Antiviral Treatments

Antibiotics abound, but virus-fighting drugs are harder to come by, and Covid-19 amply shows how much we need them. Fortunately, scientists are getting better at making and finding them.

Physician Claudette Poole doesn’t take long to rattle off a list of antiviral medications she prescribes to her patients. “There really aren’t very many,” says Poole, a pediatric infectious disease physician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

And for people with Covid-19, there’s just one approved for use: remdesivir, which doesn’t seem to save lives, but speeds recovery in those who do get well. Clearly, more antivirals would be nice to have — so why don’t we have them? Inventing them, it turns out, is not so easy.

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