Biden to increase production to COVID-19 pills despite low demand

The Biden administration announced plans on Tuesday to increase Americans’ access to Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral pill, even though providers are struggling to distribute what they have.

The White House announced that it would work with New York based pharmaceutical company Pfizer to produce more courses of Paxlovid, step up outreach to doctors about its availability and allow pharmacies to order the pill directly from the government – for free.  

“Paxlovid will be widely available everywhere in America," said Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator.

He added that the drug and antivirals like it “are the key essential tools that we’re going to need to get through the rest of this pandemic.”

The White House has already established 2,200 “test-to-treat” centers where people are offered free COVID testing and, if they test positive, can be prescribed free antiviral medication on the spot.

However, the demand for Paxlovid has been lower than expected due to falling COVID and test rates, as well as potential complications with many widely-used medications.

“I didn’t expect that I was still going to be sitting on that many of them,” Dr. Adeolu Odewale, a Maryland pharmacist, told The New York Times about the pills he still has on hand. He has only dispensed seven of the two dozen courses he received a month ago.

Eligible patients with symptoms are also turning down the pill because the omicron variant, while more contagious, was less severe.

"Most of our patients (say) ... 'I'm just going to go home and tough this out,'" one physician told Reuters.

There have also been complains about the test-to-treat initiative. A health policy professor at Georgetown University wrote about the “maze” she had to navigate to get an appointment.

The administration blamed low demand on earlier messaging that Paxlovid should be restricted to the highest-risk patients because it was not widely available after its approval in December.

“What we need to do is to help American physicians and nurse practitioners and others who can prescribe understand that we now have plenty available and anybody who is eligible, anybody who has high risk, should be getting Paxlovid,” Jha said Monday.