Phar­ma­cists 'ready to get to work' af­ter new FDA au­tho­riza­tion al­lows them to pre­scribe Pfiz­er's Covid-19 an­tivi­ral

In an ef­fort to make Pfiz­er’s Covid-19 an­tivi­ral Paxlovid more ac­ces­si­ble, the FDA on Wednes­day au­tho­rized state-li­censed phar­ma­cists to pre­scribe it, with some lim­i­ta­tions. How­ev­er, the move is get­ting mixed re­views from health ex­perts who dis­agree on who’s qual­i­fied to write pre­scrip­tions.

De­spite an over­all in­crease in Paxlovid pre­scrip­tions over the last sev­er­al months, a “sub­stan­tial­ly low­er” amount of pills was dis­pensed in high-vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty zip codes, ac­cord­ing to a re­cent CDC re­port. That’s be­cause while most Amer­i­cans live with­in five miles of a phar­ma­cy, many can’t reach a health­care provider au­tho­rized to pre­scribe the drug.

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