European countries rushed to buy the antiviral drug in January 2022, but now it’s going to waste. Why?
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00:00Essentially, well, given the estimates that we could run with previous prescription numbers
00:25and estimated COVID-19 levels for the following months, we saw that there was very little
00:33chance that countries could use all of their available oral antivirals before these would
00:39eventually expire in a few months.
01:00There are a plenty of drug interactions that are possible.
01:05The risk balancing is not easy, and I think as we also know, it goes around that we've
01:12seen cases where the drug has been dangerous, so patients have had bleedings or serious
01:20drug interactions while they've been on the Paxlovid.
01:24The other one is also that the physician needs to be aware, needs to be sure that the patient
01:30can take his medication as it's recommended, because you need to stop some of the medication.
01:42The UK, the population that can actually access Paxlovid has been severely restricted by these
01:50prescription criteria that are much more restrictive than in many other countries globally.
02:06That said, Europe could have seen a much higher use of oral antivirals, and we have evidence
02:11from other countries where this has actually happened, and they have been able to use much
02:16more, and they may depend on how many points have been able to distribute these treatments,
02:23how far into the pandemic they've decided to allow pharmacies to distribute these treatments,
02:29for example, and so on.
02:42The problem, of course, with the drug is that people should be aware of, do I belong into
02:51the risk groups?
02:52And if you belong to that, you should seek medical advice and tests very early on from
03:00the first infection sites.
03:03We've been trying to educate the people, those who are in the specialised healthcare, so
03:09that the patients would get the drug from the hospital.