US sees jump in demand for antiviral drugs

WASHINGTON • Rising Covid-19 cases are driving up the use of therapeutics, with Pfizer's oral antiviral treatment Paxlovid seeing a 315 per cent jump over the past four weeks, United States health officials said.

The increase in US cases and hospitalisations is starting to affect recommendations on behaviour, with the nation's most populous city, New York, advising stricter mask usage but stopping short of new mandates. Tech company Apple has scrapped return-to-office plans.

"Increasingly, we'll see this virus hit people who are substantially older, frail, have underlying illnesses or are distinctly immunocompromised," said infectious disease expert William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Nashville. "But we now have better treatments and many of those people will leave the hospital vertically rather than horizontally."

The US is averaging nearly 97,000 new cases a day, up from about 73,000 a week ago, according to a Reuters tally. Cases have been gradually rising since hitting a recent low of 30,000 new infections a day in late March.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday estimated that about half of infections last week were from the BA.2.12.1 sub-lineage of the Omicron variant, which has been on the rise since the middle of last month and is already the dominant strain along much of the US east coast.

"We're providing the opportunity for spread; we've taken off our masks, we're going back to group activities both in business and for recreation," said Dr Schaffner.

"Going forward, we will have to figure out when is the impact of this virus sufficient such that we might have to start putting our masks back on and doing more social distancing. That sort of discussion is going on in New York."

New York City raised its Covid-19 alert level to high on Tuesday, with its health department strongly advising wearing masks in all public indoor settings for everyone and in crowded outdoor settings for those older than 65 or at high risk.

Based on population, the US north-east has seen the greatest rise in new cases in the last seven days, led by Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts states.

There are currently nearly 20,000 people hospitalised across the country, up from 16,500 last week, according to a Reuters tally. Hospitalisations have also been steadily rising from a low of 12,000 in the middle of last month.

Based on population, states with the most hospitalisations are Maine, New York and Delaware. Deaths, a lagging indicator, have held steady at a daily average from 300 to 500. Covid-19 has killed more than a million US residents since the start of the pandemic.

Nearly 115,000 courses of Paxlovid were dispensed during the first week of this month, the Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday. A total of 668,954 courses were administered out of the available supply of 3.3 million, HHS data shows.

Paxlovid is approved for keeping high-risk individuals with Covid-19 from becoming seriously ill. It is meant to be taken for five days, shortly after symptom onset.

Providers gave out 230,257 courses of molnupiravir, Merck & Co's rival oral antiviral developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. About 3.2 million molnupiravir courses are available, HHS data shows.

The White House said last month it was aiming to address unexpectedly light demand by expanding access to treatments like Paxlovid by doubling the number of locations at which they are available.

"In recent weeks, we've gone from 20,000 sites with Paxlovid to approximately 35,000 and we'll keep working to increase availability," a senior health official said, adding that 88 per cent of the population lived within 8km of a site.

REUTERS