NY to offer antiviral Paxlovid at mobile Covid testing sites

The City of New York is creating the first mobile testing facilities in the United States that will allow people who test positive for coronavirus to receive instant and free antiviral treatment Paxlovid.

Mayor Eric Adams announced the new program Thursday in Manhattan with Dr. Ashish Jha, the Covid-19 response coordinator at the White House.

The new mobile unit program, “Test to Treat,” is part of federal and city efforts to reduce the effect of the virus and prepare for future waves of the disease. Health officials want to improve access to antiviral drugs for vulnerable New Yorkers who may not know about treatment or may not have a primary care physician or health insurance.

Adams, a Democrat who took office in January, tested positive for the virus in April and said his infection was mild in part because he took Paxlovid, made by Pfizer. The treatment has been found to substantially reduce the chances of serious illness in high-risk people if they start taking it early in the infection.

Federal regulatory bodies authorized the drug for emergency use late last year, and on Thursday, Pfizer said it had applied for approval of the treatment to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“By putting life-saving drugs into the hands of New Yorkers minutes after they test positive, we are once again leading the country in quickly providing affordable care to those who need it,” Adams said in a statement.

President Joe Biden announced a national “Test to Treat” effort in his State of the Union address in March. The federal program has hundreds of drugstore clinics and community health centers to prescribe antiviral treatments right away. No other city besides New York used mobile test units in this program.

Starting Thursday, three of the city’s mobile testing units will include a doctor who will be able to prescribe antiviral drugs to patients. The units will be installed outside pharmacies, which will be able to provide prescriptions immediately. Venues will be in Manhattan’s Inwood, Queens’ South Ozone Park and East Bronx – areas far from downtown or lower Manhattan that have many working-class residents.

The number of mobile locations that can offer the prescription will increase to more than 30 by the end of July, city officials said, adding that later this summer, New York will begin offering antiviral drugs directly from mobile units, no longer at a nearby pharmacy. . The city already offers free home delivery of antiviral treatments.

Ted Long, executive director of Test & Trace Corps, said the first patient at the new mobile testing site outside the Inwood pharmacy this week was a woman who had no cellphone and had recently been exposed to the virus. She tested positive and left the pharmacy with Paxlovid. “This initiative is focused on equity,” he said.

Jha said in an interview that there had been a huge increase in Paxlovid use across the country in the past three months and that 240,000 new prescriptions for the treatment were registered last week, the highest weekly total so far. But he said people who tested positive in poorer communities didn’t have access to antiviral treatments as often as people in wealthier communities.

“I love this idea,” he said of New York’s mobile program. “You can go to people where they are. I hope this goes very well and is a great role model for the rest of the country to follow.”

A recent study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that residents of socially and economically disadvantaged areas of the United States were half as likely to be prescribed new antiviral treatments as residents of wealthier communities, although many of distribution sites are in these areas.

Jha and Ashwin Vasan, New York City’s health commissioner, said there is plenty of Paxlovid available for New Yorkers who need it.

“Now we’re kind of swamped with Paxlovid,” Vasan said.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves