Enanta Pharmaceuticals Inc (ENTA)

[mouton29]

You're citing results from a retrospective observational study based on data that's a year or more old. Not exactly out of date, but we are two boosters beyond that and lots more infections as well. And different strains. So who knows that the current death rate is.

In any event, if you believe the Jama study, what trial is Enanta going to run? 235 v. Paxlovid in high risk 65 and over? In that population, per the article:

Among patients aged 65 years or older, the cumulative incidence of death at 90 days was 0.25% (95% CI, 0.17%-0.37%) for the treated and 2.42% (95% CI, 1.15%-2.67%) for the untreated (eFigure 3A and eTable 4 in Supplement 1).

[Note the 3.46% death rate you cite is from untreated in the Molnupiraviv arm].

There's no data on the efficacy of 235 v. death in high risk patients (or any patients for that matter), and I'm not capable of running power computations, but my gut tells me that the trial would have to be very large to show a stat sig difference for 235 v. Paxlovid.

Perhaps it would be easier to attack Paxlovid's weak point, which is, limited evidence, if any, that Paxlovid reduces symptoms. Whereas 235 has some evidence of that. That could be a trial in a much larger population and presumably easier and cheaper to enroll.