Paxlovid treatment for Covid

Paxlovid is a drug for treating Covid. It reduces the viral spread within the body and should be taken within five days of the onset of Covid symptoms. You take it for five days. I’ve never had the disease, so have no experience with the drug, but in a recent New York Times article about Paxlovid, I learned the following:

According to a million-person study by the National Institutes of Health, high-risk patients who took Paxlovid early in their illness saw a 73 percent reduction in their risk of dying from Covid, but only 15 percent of eligible patients took it. (“High risk” patients are 65 and over and those with asthma, diabetes, obesity, or other conditions.) The researchers estimated that about 135,000 hospitalizations and 48,000 deaths could have been avoided if half of the patients eligible for the medicine took it.

Reasons for not taking the drug vary, but lack of awareness was not one of them: 80 percent of the study participants knew it was available.  Many people older than 65 don’t put themselves in the high-risk category, and many wave off the drug in the early days of the disease, when symptoms tend to be mildest, thus bypassing the chance to limit early viral growth. For some, price is a concern ($1,400 per course), although it’s free for Medicaid and Medicare patients and is covered at least partially by some private insurers.

Some doctors are reluctant to prescribe it because of the long list of medications not to be mixed with Paxlovid. Patients complain about the drug’s metallic aftertaste or worry about Paxlovid rebound. (Rebound is a condition in which, after initial recovery, you either test positive again and/or experience a return of symptoms. Nobody knows for sure how common it is, and there is no strong evidence that Paxlovid causes it— a rebound has been reported by people who took the drug and those who didn’t.) 

Of those eligible (old) people I know who got Covid, some didn’t take the drug because their doctor didn’t prescribe it or no doctor was available. Of those who took it, most found it to be helpful, but some had negative experiences, including rebound and bad side effects. Those who commented on the Times article also gave mixed reviews. If I got Covid, I’m not sure what I’d do. One hurdle for us is the closure of our local clinic. Getting medical attention is now a big bother.

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