Nirmatrelvir/Ritonavir

THURSDAY, Jan. 30, 2025 -- People still see COVID-19 as an ongoing public health threat, even though the pandemic officially ended in 2023, according to a new HealthDay/Harris Poll. Nearly 3 in 4 people (72%) agree COVID is still a serious public health issue, including more than a third (35%) who strongly agree, the poll found. COVID has settled into the sort of ongoing health threat already posed by the seasonal flu, which had its turn as a pandemic back in 1918, Dr. Paul Offit , director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said. “You'll get hundreds of thousands of people hospitalized with influenza every year,” Offit told HealthDay TV. “You'll get tens of thousands of people who die every year from influenza. I think that's what COVID is now. I think this virus will be with us for decades, if not longer.” People also are apt to respond to any symptoms they might develop, with nearly 3 in 4 (73%) saying they would take an at-home test or go to a doctor or pharmacy to get tested for COVID, the poll says. “That 73% number is higher than I would have guessed,” Offit said. People with symptoms of COVID -- fever, cough, sore throat, shortness of breath, runny nose, body aches -- would do better to stay home and take a rapid test, for everyone else’s sake, Offit said. High-risk groups in particular should get tested, Offit added, so that they can receive antiviral Paxlovid to limit the severity of their infection. “Although the pandemic is over, I think we have to understand that this is a serious infection,” Offit said. “I wish we felt the same about flu, which is also a serious infection, which people should also get vaccinated and take seriously, but we often don't.” However, Offit also said that he doesn’t agree with recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that everyone 6 months and older get a COVID vaccine. “We're one of only two countries that do that,” Offit noted. “Most countries -- like countries in Western Europe, Australia, the World Health Organization, Scandinavian countries -- all pretty much target high-risk groups, meaning people who have obesity or chronic lung, chronic kidney disease or neurological diseases, people who are elderly really defined as greater than 75 and people who are pregnant.” “I think those are the groups most likely to be hospitalized if they were infected with this virus,” Offit added. The U.S. guidelines are probably as broad as they are due to a “messaging issue,” Offit said. “The thinking is that if we recommend it for everybody, then those high-risk groups are more likely to get it,” Offit said. “But I mean, we do have other targeted recommendations. I agree with most other countries in this world, which is we should target high-risk groups.” The HealthDay/Harris Poll also found that: The CDC now recommends that people with COVID stay away from others until at least 24 hours after their fever has ended and their symptoms also have improved. The recommendation also asks that people mask and keep their distance from others for five days afterward. Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 8, 2024 -- The antiviral pill Paxlovid might help some patients who are suffering from long COVID. A five-day course of Paxlovid is known to help limit symptoms and shorten illness in patients during an initial bout of COVID-19 , researchers said in a study published Jan. 6 in the journal Nature Communications Medicine .. However, evidence has been mixed whether a longer course of the antiviral could help alleviate symptoms that can last weeks or months as long COVID. In a small case series, five out of 13 long COVID patients given Paxlovid experienced sustained improvements in their symptoms, University of California-San Francisco researchers report. These findings counter clinical trial results published in June which found that Paxlovid was safe to take but did not lessen long COVID symptoms, the UCSF researchers noted. Those earlier trial results, based on data from 155 patients, appeared in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine . “We are about five years into the pandemic, and yet there are not yet any federally-approved treatments for long Covid,” Alison Cohen , an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF and lead researcher of the new study, said in a news release from the college. Related: Could Lingering Infection Be Causing Long Covid? “This is not a silver bullet, but it may help a lot of people in a meaningful way,” Cohen said. For the study, doctors prescribed up to 15 days of Paxlovid for a baker’s dozen patients with long COVID, and tracked the results. Success stories included a 56-year-old man who had improvements in symptoms after more than two years of fatigue , headaches, photosensitivity, brain fog, elevated heart rate and joint pain. In addition, a 51-year-old man who regularly experienced “crashes” related to fatigue, headaches, brain fog, and nerve pain in the hands and feet, found that his symptoms all resolved following 15 days on Paxlovid. However, a 45-year-old woman with fatigue, breathing difficulties, chest pain, weight loss and migraines found that a five-day course of Paxlovid gave her a three-day reprieve from her symptoms, but a 15-day course did nothing to help her symptoms. Long COVID has proven difficult both to treat and to pin down, researchers said. More than 200 symptoms have been ascribed to the condition, due to COVID-19 ’s effects on many different systems and organs within the body. Related: Long COVID Brain Fog: Could the Lungs Hold Clues? “If we’ve learned one thing over the last four years, it’s that long Covid is complex, and figuring out why some people benefit so remarkably from antiviral treatment while others don’t is one of the most important questions for the field,” investigator Dr. Michael Peluso , an infectious disease researcher in the UCSF School of Medicine, said in a news release. “We are going to need to embrace that complexity to get answers for the millions of people suffering from this condition,” Peluso added. Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.