Therapeutic pills, such as the antiviral medication Paxlovid, can change the way we see COVID, offering another layer of protection against severe disease and providing more assurance that spending time in public isn’t going to end with you in a hospital.
MaineHealth physician assistant Cassandra Hotaling-Hahn holds packages of Paxlovid, which is nearly 90 percent effective at preventing hospitalization from COVID-19. It costs $530 for a five-day course of treatment, but the Biden administration is making it available for free. Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
But for the treatments to work, they have to be available. Just as important, patients have to know about them, and they’ve got to be able to access them soon after they start showing symptoms.
So far, the rollout of these highly effective treatments has not been stellar. As people drop their masks and a new variant spreads, making the future of COVID uncertain, the Biden administration has to do better.
The first therapeutic treatments for COVID – monoclonal antibodies, which are given as an infusion – were found to be highly effective against serious illness. But the supply has been limited, and the people who most needed it were often the least likely to get it. One reason is the requirement of getting to an infusion site within 10 days after symptoms first show.
Only one of the three available monoclonal antibody treatments has been found to be effective against the omicron variant, further limiting supply.
However, medications such as Paxlovid, which comes in pill form, have been shown to reduce the severity of the latest variant. It was first made available in December, and by early March, the Biden administration was buying and shipping out 175,000 doses a week, the Press Herald’s Joe Lawlor reported this week.
The pills as well as the antibodies are being bought and distributed for free by the government. However, they are not being used as much as they should be, given their ability to keep people from getting very sick. We’re leaving too many on the shelves, even as they could prevent COVID from disrupting our lives as it has in the past.
It’s not entirely clear why. But one factor certainly is the window in which one must receive the treatments in order for them to work. It should be much easier for someone to get Paxlovid and other antiviral pills – forcing a sick person to make a series of phone calls and errands doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The Biden administration thought so too. It has launched its “Test to Treat” initiative, which allows a person to get tested for COVID at a pharmacy, then immediately receive the medication.
However, Test to Treat is limited now to just a relative few pharmacies, and there are barriers to making it available more widely. The president needs to streamline that process if the country is going to properly handle the next uptick in cases.
Americans also should be made aware of the power of the therapeutics so that they know to seek them out as soon as they feel ill. More of these medications are in development now, and they’ll play a large role in fighting COVID in the future – people need to understand them and feel comfortable with them if that’s going to work.
The $10 billion package agreed to by Senate negotiators this week will help, even if it is less than what the moment calls for. At least half would be used to research and produce therapeutics; a public information campaign should also be a part of the effort.
We may be over the omicron surge, but that doesn’t mean we can forget about COVID. The more-contagious BA.2 variant is spreading, cases have plateaued or are inching upward, and we can’t say for sure what the next few months will look like.
But whatever the future holds for COVID, therapeutics can make it far less deadly, and far less disruptive.
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