White House In Attempts to Globalizing Pfizer’s Covid-19 Antiviral Tablet

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  • The Biden administration is set to unveil new details and announcements Monday on Paxlovid, Pfizer’s antiviral Covid-19 pill, a White House official tells CNN.
  • And there were very, very few pills around.
  • There are enough Paxlovid pills “for the short run,”.

The Biden administration is set to unveil new details and announcements Monday on Paxlovid, Pfizer’s antiviral Covid-19 pill, a White House official tells CNN.

White House response

The administration has plans underway to increase the availability and uptake of the drug, White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Dr Ashish Jha announced on Twitter.

“Over the next week, you’ll hear a lot more about what the Biden Administration is doing to make Pax widely available and easily accessible to all Americans,” Jha wrote in a Twitter post-Friday.

According to Jha’s tweets, the administration is working on establishing more places where Paxlovid will be available, including more test-to-treat sites.

Certain pharmacies across the United States — including CVS, Walgreens and Walmart — participate in the test-to-treat program at some locations.

“The CVS Pharmacy adjacent to each participating MinuteClinic location has received a supply of COVID-19 oral antiviral medication from the federal government and can fill prescriptions for patients as prescribed,” he said.

“When you get sick with a viral illness, the last thing you want to do is try to get an appointment at a physician’s office, get out of bed, wait in the waiting room, get seen, then have to drive somewhere else to pick up at your pharmacy,” Griffin said, adding that “being able to get taken care of as soon as possible without all the delays that our system has introduced” is a positive.

Uptake is very, very low and slow

On the ground, it appears that the pace of Covid-19 antiviral prescriptions under the test-to-treat program has not reached the level that health officials expected by this point, said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

“The bottom line is, the uptake is very, very low and slow despite there being a lot of these drugs in the market and available,” Freeman said.

Traditionally, “most physicians learn about new drugs from pharmaceutical reps,” but because the Covid-19 antivirals are being handled under emergency use authorizations, “there are limitations on how much marketing versus education the pharmaceutical companies can be doing or providing.”

“And I try to talk, and I try to educate them,” Griffin said. 

But because they don’t feel comfortable, they say, ‘You know what, I’m going to have them see their endocrinologist.

“And the day, the minutes, are ticking away.”

A call for Congress 

There are two antiviral pills authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat Covid-19 at home: Pfizer’s Paxlovid for people 12 and older, and Merck’s molnupiravir for adults.

And there were very, very few pills around.

There are enough Paxlovid pills “for the short run,” Jha said, calling on Congress to pass an additional package to “fund acquisition of more pills” as well as the possibility of other treatments.

He laid out some of the consequences should Congress fail to pass additional funding.

The US will run out of money for Paxlovid “reasonably soon,” he said, warning, “we actually aren’t even going to be able to pay our bills for what we’ve already entered into a contract with Pfizer for, so that’s going to be a problem.”

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Source: CNN

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