The Biden Administration is working on a plan to make Pfizer's Covid-19 antiviral pill Paxlovid available across the U.S.
There are containers of Pfizer's Paxlovid antiviral medication.
The Biden Administration will announce next week a plan to allow all U.S. pharmacies to order Paxlovid, which will greatly increase the drug's accessibility to people at risk of serious Covid-19 symptoms.
The administration has already ordered 20 million courses of Paxlovid or 600 million pills, with 10 million due by the end of June and the remaining 10 million due by the end of September.
The trials show Paxlovid can reduce the risk of hospitalization or death from Covid-19 by 89%.
Pfizer and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Paxlovid received an emergency use authorization from the FDA on December 22. Hospitals from Michigan to Florida reported running low on the drug. The chief medical executive of Michigan told NBC that Paxlovid is not being widely prescribed because doctors are hesitant to recommend a medication that is unfamiliar to patients. The Biden Administration wants to make Paxlovid more accessible. Friday, the World Health Organization officially endorsed Paxlovid as a treatment for high-risk patients, calling it preferable to molnupiravir, an oral Covid-19 antiviral that has shown questionable effectiveness in trials.
Paxlovid is useful for patients at high risk of severe Covid-19, such as older people or people with immune disorders, but it is not useful for low-risk patients.
The World Health Organization endorsed Pfizer's anti-viral pill Paxlovid for high-risk covid patients.
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