With 20 million treatment courses of Pfizer’s Paxlovid antiviral COVID-19 pills, the U.S. is hoping to mitigate increasing numbers of new COVID-19 infections in the nation.
According to a White House fact sheet released Tuesday Paxlovid, a treatment authorized for people 12 years of age or older that has been shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by about 90%, are “now in ample supply.”
In order to qualify for a Paxlovid prescription, patients must weigh at least 88 pounds, test positive for COVID-19 and be at high risk for developing severe COVID-19, according to Yale Medicine. Patients must begin the treatment – which consists of three pills twice a day for five days – within five days of developing symptoms.
Last month, President Joe Biden announced a Test-to-Treat initiative aimed at making it easier for people at high risk of severe disease to quickly access oral antiviral treatments such as Paxlovid. This initiative creates additional locations where people can get a COVID-19 test, meet with a medical professional and receive free oral antiviral pills in one visit. By Tuesday, there were more than 2,200 Test-to-Treat sites around the country, including sites specifically for military families and veterans.
“As a result, usage of oral antivirals has more than doubled over the last several weeks,” said the White House. Now, the Biden administration is taking new measures that will hopefully make access to oral antiviral treatment even easier.
These measures include: doubling the number of locations where the treatments are available from 20,000 to 40,000 in the coming weeks and launching a new effort to stand up federally-supported Test-to-Treat sites, as well as supporting medical providers with more guidance and tools to understand and prescribe treatments and communicating to the American people that safe, effective treatments are widely available.
“These actions will help strengthen and further build the infrastructure to ensure that lifesaving treatments for COVID-19 are quickly distributed around the country, widely available, and easy to access. At the same time, ensuring that this remains the case – and securing more and even better treatment – will require additional funding from Congress,” the White House said.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that, as of April 20, the seven-day rolling average of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S.
was up by more than 35%. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris tested positivefor the virus this week.
New cases have been fueled by subvariants of omicron variant and, according to Yale Medicine, Paxlovid is expected to work against the variant.
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok
Related
