Washington, D.C.—While it took a while for pharmacists to get supplies of new oral antiviral drugs that fight COVID, the demand appears to be lower than anticipated, according to federal data.
Merck said earlier this month that about 3.1 million courses of its molnupiravir, an investigational oral antiviral COVID-19 medicine, have been provided to the U.S. Government for allocation across the country.
Pharmacists and other healthcare providers can check a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services public website to help providers identify locations that have received shipments of government-procured COVID-19 therapeutics available under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which includes Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir/PF-07321332 and ritonavir) from Pfizer.
In anticipation of the results from clinical trials that led to the EUA and the potential for regulatory authorization or approval, Merck manufactured 10 million courses of treatment by the end of 2021, with at least 20 million courses expected to be produced in 2022.
In some states, however, the drugs have just been sitting on pharmacy shelves. In Mississippi, for example, state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said Friday morning that treatment options are now being underutilized, even though Mississippi was a leader in monoclonal antibody treatments during the Delta wave last summer.
"Now we have a new generation of treatments that are available to us," Dr. Dobbs told the Daily Journal in Tupelo. "We want to make sure that people know how to access them."
To date, 2,680 treatment courses of Paxlovid have been allocated to Mississippi—2,010 of which are still available for use. One reason, Dr. Dobbs explains, is the number of drug interactions. At the same time, 10,944 treatments of molnupiravir have been allocated, and 10,154 are still available.
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