Are Pfizer’s Covid pills going to highest-risk patients?

News Times Link: Abbie Robinson gasped while driving to an emergency room in Long Beach, CA on January 19, and was appalled that her cystic fibrosis and COVID-19 would prove to be a lethal combination. After her nurse marked her as a high-risk patient and her rapid coronavirus test returned positive, her doctors offered her 24-year-old graduate student hope. That was the recipe for Pfizer new antiviral pills, Paxlovid.
As ill as she was, the duty now fell to Robinson to song down a deliver of the medication.
Paxlovid, a five-day oral coronavirus treatment that can significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization and death, remains in severe shortage after emergency approval on Dec. 22.
When Robinson took the prescription, there was a record spike in cases due to omicron nutrition in California. She competed with dozens of other newly diagnosed people for a supply of 9,560 pills the federal government had allocated in recent two weeks.
Robinson made several calls to about 24 local pharmacies before finding an almost depleted supply of Paxlovid in Orange County CVS. She said the pharmacy would have been 30 minutes away if she hadn’t been driving “in the fast lane” to make sure she arrived before she ran out of pills, she said.
The emergency room doctor informed Robinson that the only monoclonal antibody treatments that have yet to be FDA approved for omicron, GlaxoSmithKline and sotrovimab Vir Biotechnology are not available at any hospital near Long Beach. Timing is critical when person has been diagnosed with a high risk for severe Covid. Tablets must be started within 5 days of symptom onset, adding to the anxiety associated with getting a prescription.

Restricting antiviral prescriptions

Robinson’s frantic medical odyssey symbolizes the path many Americans had to make for this rare and potentially life-saving antiviral drug.
The Biden administration says it has purchased 20 million Paxlovid courses, half of which are expected to ship by the end of June and the rest by September 30. A stable drug supply is not expected until April.
In January alone, the federal government was able to provide 265,000 Paxlovid courses to the state health department, despite nearly 20 million Covid cases and 55,000 related deaths in the United States. Although the number of Omicron cases across the country is declining, COVID-19 is still causing more than 140,000 hospitalizations and thousands of deaths every day.
Currently, the federal authorities apportions the Paxlovid deliver to country fitness departments, which then distribute their proportion to nearby pharmacies, fitness structures and long-time period care centers as they see fit.
Little did Robinson know, however Californias fitness branch has now no longer sought to limition Paxlovids availability best to the ones on the very maximum hazard of hospitalization and mortality.

Follow Us On Twitter