AUSTIN, Texas — Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin say increasing the number of patients who take Paxlovid when they get COVID-19 could make a huge difference.
Researchers say only about 15% of high-risk patients take the antiviral drug when infected with COVID-19. Researchers found that if the drug had been used on 20% of symptomatic COVID-19 patients during the omicron wave, there could have been 850,000 fewer hospitalizations and $170 billion could have been saved.
If each symptomatic person was assumed to go on to infect about one other person, giving Paxlovid to even one out of every five of all symptomatic patients could result in 280,000 fewer hospitalizations and save nearly $57 billion, UT researchers found.
Researchers hope their findings help doctors and policymakers make decisions during future waves of COVID-19.
The findings appear in the February issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
“This model shows us there are real benefits to using Paxlovid, not just for the patients receiving treatment, but for the people around them,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a UT professor of integrative biology and statistics and data sciences, the director of the Center for Pandemic Decision Science and the corresponding author of the paper. “Not only does this drug help keep high-risk patients out of the hospital, but it can substantially decrease the chance that a treated patient will infect other people.”