A maddening search for treatment
My colleague Rebecca Robbins has been writing about Covid-19 vaccines and treatments for the past year. So when her vaccinated, 73-year-old mother tested positive for the virus last week, she set out to find one of two treatments: GlaxoSmithKline's antibody infusion or Pfizer's antiviral pills, known as Paxlovid.
What followed, Rebecca wrote, was a frustrating "seven-hour odyssey that would show me there was a lot I didn't grasp."
Demand for the drugs is surging as Omicron cases increase, but supplies have been scarce. Rebecca was also racing against time — the treatments work best when taken soon after contracting the virus.
Many of the pharmacies near Rebecca's mother in Santa Barbara, Calif., didn't have the pills or had run out of them. When Rebecca finally found one that did carry Paxlovid, she ran into more hurdles when trying to get her mother a prescription. Her mother's doctor's office didn't prescribe the pill, and besides, they said, they would need to see her in person.
Maddeningly, several telemedicine providers, urgent care clinics and doctors from other health systems told her the same thing: Her mother would need to be evaluated in person. That was an issue because her mother doesn't drive and she would not consider taking a taxi or a bus and risk exposing others to the virus. "Other medical facilities I called that afternoon provided me with information that was just plain wrong," Rebecca wrote.
Eventually, her mother got an unexpected call from a doctor with her primary care provider who wrote her a prescription. Her mother began taking the treatment and started feeling better a few days later.
"But the fact that the process was so hard for a journalist whose job it is to understand how Paxlovid gets delivered is not encouraging," Rebecca wrote. "I worry that many patients or their family would give up when told 'no' as many times as I was."
"I was also reminded that even a 'free" treatment can come with significant costs," she added. Between telemedicine visits and an Uber driver to deliver the meds, she spent $256.54 to get the pills, a price that many patients and their families may struggle to afford.
"President Biden recently called the Pfizer pills a 'game changer,'" Rebecca wrote. "My experience suggests it won't be quite so simple."
Read Rebecca's full story about her ordeal:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0...
