The United States government doubled its order for Pfizer's Covid pills on Tuesday, a move that will modestly increase the nation's very limited supply of the treatment in the short term.
The new order will eventually provide enough pills for an additional 10 million Americans, bringing the government's total order of the drug to 20 million treatment courses. They will not be available immediately. A senior administration official said that 350,000 treatment courses would be added over the next two months, but only 35,000 of them will be delivered this month.
Roughly 35 million adults remain without a shot and are more vulnerable to severe outcomes from Covid-19, as underscored by the order. More than 10 million more have been vaccined, but have risk factors that make them more vulnerable.
The new order suggests that the federal response to the Pandemic will increasingly rely on oral treatments.
President Biden said on Tuesday that they may need even more. That is the estimate we need right now.
The government will pay Pfizer the same amount for each treatment course as it did for the initial order, a senior official said.
The Pfizer treatment Paxlovid is not expected to ramp up into the millions until April, too late to help with the current surge. The combined order is not due to be filled until the end of September, as the company says it takes six to eight months to produce the drug.
The doubled order is part of the federal government's Covid strategy. He said that they have the potential to change the course of the epidemic.
Two weeks ago Paxlovid was authorized for use in high-risk Covid patients. Pfizer expects to produce 120 million courses of it by the year 2022. In clinical trials, the treatment proved to be highly effective in staving off severe illness when taken soon after the start of symptoms.
Pfizer's treatment is meant to be taken in 30 pills over five days, with patients taking two of Pfizer's pills and one of the H.I.V. drug ritonavir.
Public health experts warn that it could be difficult to get the pills to the people who need them if there is no adequate testing supply.
Mr. Biden said on Tuesday that more federal test sites would open, as well as a website that would allow Americans to order free tests from a pool of 500 million.
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Paxlovid is a Pfizer treatment pill. Health officials need alternatives to vaccines to fight the disease.
He said that he knew this was frustrating. It is frustrating to me. We are making improvements.
Some parts of the country have begun receiving Paxlovid supplies. Federal officials are considering using a model similar to the one used for distributing monoclonal antibody treatments in order to shift the allocation model based on case rates and hospitalizations.
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The global surge. The Omicron variant of the coronaviruses is less severe than earlier waves, and the last days of the year brought the good news. Governments are focusing more on expanding vaccination than limiting the spread.
Return to work. The recent surge has led to a reversal of workplace policies at some companies. Some employees are being told to stay home for just days or hours before their return.
The majority leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, urged the federal government to adopt such a model. He said that with case counts so high in New York, we deserve to get as many of these antivirals as quickly as possible.
The Department of Health and Human Services has a list of locations where the Pfizer pill is available. State health officials recommend that it only be used for patients at highest risk because of the limited supply.
The National Institutes of Health, which formulates treatment guidelines for physicians, recommended last month that when supply is limited, the highest-risk unvaccinated patients and people with weakened immune systems should be prioritized.
Many state officials have already followed the guidance and are carefully distributing the pills they have received. Paxlovid should only be given to people over the age of 70 who also have severe health conditions like end-stage heart disease, or younger patients with weakened immune systems, according to Arizona.
In case of an outbreak, the state of West Virginia has shipped around 20 treatment courses to each of 14 locations.
In Louisiana, health officials met with hospital executives from across the state, who pitched a plan that the state adopted this week, distributing its most recent allocation of Paxlovid among hospital outpatient pharmacies.
The idea was to ease the strain on overflowing emergency departments and intensive care units, allowing physicians in such settings to discharge at-risk patients after prescribe them the pill.
It will shorten the time between when a patient is identified as a candidate for Paxlovid and when they start taking it.
He said that you have to put it in the hands of providers and hope that it gets to people who need it.
