Why are billions of euros worth of COVID drug Paxlovid going to waste in Europe?

European countries rushed to buy the antiviral drug in January 2022, but now it’s going to waste. Why?

Transcript

00:00Essentially, well, given the estimates that we could run with previous prescription numbers

00:25and estimated COVID-19 levels for the following months, we saw that there was very little

00:33chance that countries could use all of their available oral antivirals before these would

00:39eventually expire in a few months.

01:00There are a plenty of drug interactions that are possible.

01:05The risk balancing is not easy, and I think as we also know, it goes around that we've

01:12seen cases where the drug has been dangerous, so patients have had bleedings or serious

01:20drug interactions while they've been on the Paxlovid.

01:24The other one is also that the physician needs to be aware, needs to be sure that the patient

01:30can take his medication as it's recommended, because you need to stop some of the medication.

01:42The UK, the population that can actually access Paxlovid has been severely restricted by these

01:50prescription criteria that are much more restrictive than in many other countries globally.

02:06That said, Europe could have seen a much higher use of oral antivirals, and we have evidence

02:11from other countries where this has actually happened, and they have been able to use much

02:16more, and they may depend on how many points have been able to distribute these treatments,

02:23how far into the pandemic they've decided to allow pharmacies to distribute these treatments,

02:29for example, and so on.

02:42The problem, of course, with the drug is that people should be aware of, do I belong into

02:51the risk groups?

02:52And if you belong to that, you should seek medical advice and tests very early on from

03:00the first infection sites.

03:03We've been trying to educate the people, those who are in the specialised healthcare, so

03:09that the patients would get the drug from the hospital.