As-it-happened: Plan for two pills to treat Covid at home announced - BBC News
The PM tells a briefing on 20 April 2021 he hopes people will be able to take a pill at home that stops "the virus in its tracks".
Scientists hope to find more treatments to be used against Covid, following on from the discovery Dexamethasone helped patients Image caption: Scientists hope to find more treatments to be used against Covid, following on from the discovery Dexamethasone helped patients

The decision to set up an antiviral taskforce reflects the desire to make progress in finding treatments people can take at home if they have tested positive or been exposed to someone who has.

Through the Recovery trial run in hospitals, the UK has been at the forefront of developing treatments for people who are already severely ill.

But this focus is aimed at identifying medicines that could help prevent people getting ill.

There are thought to be a number of treatments that are being looked at that work by stopping the virus replicating and making someone very ill.

As Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged, there will be a future wave of infection even though the scale of it will be limited by the rollout of the vaccines.

When it comes, the hope is the antivirals will offer another tool with which to fight it.

It is all part, the PM says, of learning to live with the virus.

But at the moment this is just an aspiration rather than a guarantee of something.