STAT Plus: The world is racing toward Covid-19 drugs. In normal times, it takes years to get new antivirals out the door
Researchers may be racing to develop new Covid-19 treatments, but normally it has taken slightly more than six years, on average, to test new anti-viral medicines and then win U.S. regulatory approval, according to a new analysis of medicines approved over the past two decades.
In fact, between clinical trials and regulatory reviews, the combined time to win Food and Drug Administration approval for all anti-infective medicines between 2000 and 2019 was longer — slightly more than seven years. Meanwhile, the mean time to study and receive approval for all other types of medicines was more than eight years, according to the analysis by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development.
