The antiviral Paxlovid has changed the battle against COVID-19.
It's so effective that more than 85% of people at risk for severe disease can avoid a bad outcome with a five-day course of the prescription medication given within five days of symptoms starting.
But word of its effectiveness has been slow to catch on. Only about 7.6 million Americans have taken the medication, with nearly 1.6 million doses currently available nationwide.
People have been apparently scared off by misinformation and side effects – one that'sminor and goes away after the medication's five-day course and the other that might not be due to the drug at all.
And doctors, concerned about interactions with other medications, have withheld Paxlovid from vulnerable people rather than stop the other drugs for a handful of days.
This has left only a fraction of those eligible receiving them, despite a strong lobbying effort by the Biden administration and public health officials.
How does Paxlovid work against COVID-19? Like other antivirals, Paxlovid is designed to stop a virus from making copies of itself. Limiting the number of copies helps the immune system fight off the virus. Made by Pfizer, Paxlovid is a combination of two drugs: ritonavir and nirmatrelvir.
Nirmatrelvir, an oval, pink pill, is a so-called protease inhibitor – the same type of drug that turned HIV into a manageable disease. It stops the SARS-CoV-2 virus from replicating.
Ritonavir, a white or off-white pill, boosts the activity of nirmatrelvir.
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