President Biden’s plan to spend more than $7 billion on new anti-viral pills to treat Covid as a key tool in the fight against the pandemic could be complicated by a testing crunch.
than Merck's in preventing hospitalization in high-risk groups— 89 percent compared to 30 percent.
On Thursday, the National Institutes of Health's Covid-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel released interim"Logistical or supply constraints may make it impossible to offer available outpatient therapies to all eligible patients," the panel said in a statement. When there is limited availability, the panel said,"patients at highest risk of clinical progression should be prioritized to receive these therapies.
That could help cut down on long lines that have been forming at many testing centers but won’t address long waits for results as labs become inundated with requests. Commercial labs, which have been processing the majority of the country’s Covid tests, are starting to see delays given the surge in demand in certain regions, like New York and New Jersey.
But public health experts warn that could be too little, too late, and say the administration should have done more to prepare for a surge like the one the U.S is experiencing now due to the"The White House has been too often in reaction mode, not being proactive," said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, speaking on MSNBC this week.
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