The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 147 (647)

Late-breaking news: The FDA has given authorization to Pfeizer's antiviral, Paxlovid. It can be used by adults and children over the age of 12 with mild to moderate covid who are at risk of progressing to more serious disease. The full course of treatment is 30 pills with three pills twice daily for five days. The drug will only be available by prescription and muct be given within five days of symptom onset. The bad news with the good news is that there are only 180,000 courses of treatment currently available. There should be another 80 million ready by the end of 2022; the federal government has reserved 10 million of those.

Only one of the three monoclonal antibody treatments currently available works against Omicron.  Sotrovimab was developed by GlaxoSmithKlein. While the other two treatments were developed using blood of people who survived covid-19. Sotrovimab was developed using blood of people who survived the 2003 SARS epidemic. 

Opinions on the plan POTUS discussed yesterday are mixed. One criticism was that it is a reactive plan instead of a proactive one. Only 30 percent of Americans have gotten boosters. The roll-out was rocky which may have contributed to the 30 percent. Covid tests are critical to the plan but in short supply. Finally, hospitals are already stretched thin. Perhaps military or federal aid could have been given sooner. I am not sure how POTUS was supposed to get vaccine-hesitant or -resistant people to be vaccinated, but that was another dig at him, that only 62 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated. An emergency doctor and academic dean for Brown University's School of Public Health summarized, "Everything in this plan that he released today is what I want to see. I just wish we'd had it earlier."

England has cut the number of days of isolation required for people after they show symptoms. It was 10 and has been shortened to seven. Two negative tests, one each on days 6 and 7, are required to end isolation at seven days. In the US, isolation lasts for 10 days after showing symptoms. A vaccinated person is good to go if there has been no fever in 24 hours and symptoms are improving. Unvaccinated people are required to isolate for a full 10 days if they have contact with an infected person. 

Israel is beginning to give a fourth dose of vaccine to people over 60 and to medical workers. Whether this is in response to Omicron, I do not know. I wonder if the idea will cross the pond and happen here as well. Things are going to get complicated number-wise what with number or percent of people who have had at least one dose, two doses, three doses or four. What would "fully vaccinated" mean after that? 

I heard today of two children in different places who were exposed to covid via their preschool. In both cases, the kids are too young to be vaccinated. So far both have tested negative. I do not want to think how I might have handled that happening with one of my children. I don't think I would have handled it at all well. I also today heard several people say that we will all eventually be infected with some coronavirus variant known or not yet known. Survival of the fittest in real time?