AUSTIN (KXAN) — Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin said Monday that if a small percentage of symptomatic COVID-19 patients took an antiviral drug during the 2022 omicron wave, the number of hospitalizations would have been reduced by hundreds of thousands and billions of dollars would have been saved.
According to the UT announcement, in 2023 the National Institutes of Health found about 15% of high-risk patients take Paxlovid when infected with COVID-19.
UT said their researchers reviewed the 2022 data and found that increasing the Paxlovid use to 20% of symptomatic patients would result in a range of 280,000 to 850,000 fewer hospitalizations and a cost savings of around $57 billion to more than $170 billion.
Even with lower transmission levels of the virus, UT said researchers estimate that an expanded use of Paxlovid could save approximately 30,000 lives during an outbreak.
“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, UT professor of integrative biology and statistics and data sciences, director of the Center for Pandemic Decision Science and one of the study’s authors in the UT announcement. “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.”
The Associated Press reported on Feb. 7, some potential Paxlovid patients aren’t getting the benefits of the drug due to cost.
When Paxlovid was first authorized for emergency use in the U.S. in December 2021, it was free for anyone who needed it. Once the government stopped funding the treatment, Pfizer set a list price of $1,390.
According to UT, the researchers assumed patients took Paxlovid within the recommended five days of symptom onset.
UT said the range of hospitalization and cost savings was based on the number of other people the symptomatic patients could infect.
At the low end, if the patient infects about one other person, giving Paxlovid to 20% of all symptomatic patients could result in 280,000 fewer hospitalizations and save nearly $57 billion, UT said.
On the other side of the scale, if the patient infects closer to three people, as some research has found with the omicron variant, using Paxlovid in 20% of patients would be predicted to result in 850,000 fewer hospitalizations and save more than $170 billion.
