Posted on 12/26/21
| News Source: i24
HMOs will soon be able to start administering drug to patients at high risk of severe illness
Pfizer's Covid treatment pill will arrive in Israel as soon as Wednesday for distribution to HMOs, so they can begin to administer the drug to patients at risk of complications and severe illness, Channel 12 reported Sunday.
The shipment date was agreed to during a phone discussion between Israel's Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in which a deal was struck to deliver 100,000 doses to the Jewish state.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week granted emergency authorization to the medication that was shown in clinical trials to be nearly 90 percent effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths in patients at high risk of developing severe illness.
Recent lab data suggests the drug — marketed under the brand name Paxlovid — retains effectiveness against the omicron variant.
Israel is also expected to receive thousands of units of Merck’s molnupiravir oral antiviral drug within the following few weeks, which was also recently approved by the FDA.