The High Authority of Health (HAS) must initiate, on Wednesday, a process to modify the status of Paxlovid, of which approximately 4,400 doses have yet been prescribed, while 500,000 were ordered.
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A pill against COVID-19, finally! Appeared at the end of December, 2021, it offered a double promise: to save lives and that of alleviating the hospital load related to SAR-COV-2 infections. This pill is paxlovid. Developed by the Pfizer laboratory, it is available since February 3 in France. As of December 22, on the basis of the results of the first clinical trials, the French state commissioned 500,000 doses from the firm. Three months later, the startup was at least labels: March 27, 4,416 doses of this treatment only were prescribed, in France, to positive patients for the CVIV-19 virus, announces the National Agency. Safety of the drug.
Irony of the fate, the paxlovid arrived when the Omicron wave was in full reflux (the peak of the fifth wave was reached around January 24th). “Many professionals said:” This medicine arrives too late, “says Jacques Battistoni. But this is no longer the case today”, the infections starting upwards.
Aware of the use of such much lower than expected treatment, the High Authority of Health (HAS) was to hire on Wednesday, April 6, an approach to amend the status of Paxlovid. This medicine should then switch to a conventional prescription regime, “end of April or early May”, “says Philippe Besset, President of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Trade Unions of France.
An answer to one of the main obstacles to its use. General practitioners, to which it is advisable to propose it to the patients, deplore a modality of prescription too complex. Because this medicine is new, it was placed under the “Authorization in Early Access”.
Procedure Quite heavy
In Europe, in fact, the PaxLovid obtained, on January 27, an “authorization to put on the conditional market”. This procedure is reserved for medicines that meet a medical need not satisfied, even as data on their long-term efficiency and safety are not yet known. “This is the first time in France that a drug prescribed by general practitioners enjoys such an early access authorization,” reports Philippe Besset.
This status allows close monitoring of its effects in patients. But it imposes on the prescribers a rather heavy procedure. “We must go on an online platform of the Pfizer laboratory, identifying and fill out a questionnaire on the characteristics [symptoms, age, other diseases …] patients, explains Jacques Battistoni, president of the union of general practitioners MG France. A Very unusual procedure for us. “It takes” twenty to thirty minutes to the general practitioner to fill out this online form, “says Olivier Saint-Lary, president of the National College of General practitioners. The simplification of the procedure proposed by the HAS should delete this constraint, thus promoting the requirements.
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