Three Covid medicines with the potential to ¡°change the course¡± of the pandemic will be authorised for mass production and use in the EU by October under a European Commission plan.

Stella Kyriakides, the commissioner for health, said such a move would reduce hospitalisation and tackle the long-term impact of Covid, with one in 10 people reporting symptoms 12 weeks after infection.

An initial ¢æ90m (£78m) has been available for clinical trials and ¢æ40m will be given to manufacturers to ramp up production. It is hoped that a further two therapeutic drugs could be added to the list of three by the end of the year.

The five drugs selected for investment, which will be chosen from a long list of 57 candidates drawn up by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), will be wholly produced within EU member states.

¡°The idea is to have EU production,¡± Kyriakides said. ¡°And we would reserve the factories for this in order to be able to show that, if we needed it, we could start ramping up production as quickly as possible.

¡°We¡¯re seeing that the effects of Covid can be long-lasting and then infected people can have the symptoms for far longer than then could be expected and therapeutics will be playing a very significant role in our response to Covid,¡± the commissioner added.

¡°They¡¯ll be helping to save lives, they will be speeding up recovery time. We will aim to, by October, develop and authorise three new effective Covid-19 therapeutics that can have the potential to change the course of Covid-19, and another two potentially by the end of the year.¡±

There are three medicines already under rolling review by the EMA: the  Regeneron antibody combination , the Celltrion monoclonal antibody , and the monoclonal antibodies from Eli Lilly , which offered evidence of  reducing the risk of hospitalisation and death by 87% .

While the Regeneron and Celltrion drugs have not been given marketing authorisation, member states have been given permission by the EMA to use them on patients not requiring oxygen and at high risk of progressing to severe illness.