A new National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded study sheds new light on the waning effectiveness of Pfizer’s (NYSE:PFE) Paxlovid to prevent patient hospitalizations due to COVID. The drug—the most prescribed FDA-approved oral COVID medication in the United States—has seen its efficacy rate drop in half, according to the report. The findings may validate the concerns of some researchers that predict Paxlovid’s efficacy could decrease over time, given its reliance on antiviral mode-of-action.
The study was lead by Dr. Scott Dryden-Peterson, an infectious disease specialist with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The population-based cohort study measured patients from a large healthcare system providing care for 1.5 million patients in Massachusetts and New Hampshire during the Omicron wave, from January 1 to May 15, 2022. Doctors maintained staged access and capacity to prescribe nirmatrelvir plus ritonavir (Paxlovid), and 30,322 non-hospitalized adults with a 87.2% vaccination rate, over age 49 with COVID-19 and without medication contraindications participated. A full 6036 patients—or 19.9% of the study—were prescribed Paxlovid while 24,286 (80.1%) patients were not.
