The White House has reportedly acquired 20 million “courses” of Pfizer’s COVID-19 treatment pill, paxlovid. According to a report from CNN, approximately 100,000 courses of the pill will be distributed to pharmacies across the country each quarter. Moving forward, distribution tactics and increased acquisition of paxlovid will be monitored as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
The Hill reports that the COVID-19 treatment pill will be made available to those who are at “high-risk for progression to severe COVID-19.” While vague in description, this means that the treatment could be administered to “60 percent of adults who test positive, including people with diabetes or obesity.” Once prescribed, patients will be receive six Paxlovid pills per day for five days.
Thus far, medical officials believe paxlovid is an effective way to combat the virus. CNN reports that paxlovid cut hospitalization or death by 89% if given to high-risk adults.
“Paxlovid first became authorized by the FDA at the end of December. And there were very, very few pills around. The administration worked incredibly hard to both increase production and acquisition, and the good news is we’ve made really substantial progress,” White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told NPR.
“Now we’ve got to turn those pills into prescriptions and into the things that patients can get so that they can get better if they get infected. We have a big set of efforts that we have been working on and launching, and we’re going to be doing a lot more this week.”
