The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized new medications to treat COVID-19, with emergency authorizations for treatment pills from both Pfizer and Merck. The federal government also announced it will purchase 10 million courses of the Pfizer drug. The Pfizer one is called Paxlovid and is taken twice per day for five days alongside a generic antiviral drug called ritonavir. They’re recommending the prescription for patients with mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19, and claim it could prevent some people from needing to be hospitalized. Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement, “This authorization provides a new tool to combat COVID-19 at a crucial time in the pandemic as new variants emerge and promises to make antiviral treatment more accessible to patients who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19.” In other news, the World Health Organization is …