How antivirals provide hope to vulnerable Covid patients

It has taken two years of research for the first antivirals to be approved, with drugs becoming available more than a year after the first Covid vaccines were given in the UK. So why has it taken so long, comparatively, for effective antivirals to be developed? And what role will they play in the UK, which now has broad vaccine protection against Covid?

Vaccines come first and antivirals afterwards when most predictions suggested it would be the other way around. Why?

How will the new antiviral drugs be used?

What still needs to be discovered about antivirals?

What lessons are there for treating Covid from other use of antivirals?