New da­ta from HHS show that more than 162,000 cours­es of Pfiz­er’s Covid-19 an­tivi­ral Paxlovid were ad­min­is­tered across the US over the past week, con­tin­u­ing a streak of in­creased us­age of the pill, and sig­nal­ing not on­ly ris­ing case num­bers but more aware­ness of how to ac­cess it.

In com­par­i­son to this week, about 670,000 cours­es of the Pfiz­er pill have been ad­min­is­tered across the first five months since Paxlovid has been on the US mar­ket, av­er­ag­ing about 33,000 cours­es ad­min­is­tered per week in that time.

A Pfiz­er spokesper­son told End­points News the com­pa­ny does “not have any con­cerns nor fore­see any sup­ply is­sues in our abil­i­ty to sup­port if [us­age] rates in­crease.”

Cu­mu­la­tive­ly, as of May 24, al­most 3.8 mil­lion dos­es of Paxlovid have been made avail­able to states so far by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and about 2.4 mil­lion of those have been or­dered by states, with more than 831,000 cours­es ad­min­is­tered.

Signs for such a spike in us­age were ev­i­dent ear­li­er this month, as in a call with re­porters se­nior HHS of­fi­cials cred­it­ed the surge in the use of Paxlovid to their out­reach, and through the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Test to Treat ini­tia­tive, which al­lows for use of Paxlovid with a pos­i­tive test at par­tic­i­pat­ing phar­ma­cies.

“We have seen more than a 315% in­crease in Paxlovid use over the past four weeks. In the first week of May, near­ly 115,000 cours­es were dis­pensed,” an of­fi­cial said at the time.

Mean­while, out­side of Paxlovid, few oth­er treat­ment op­tions are re­al­ly in wide use.

Mer­ck’s mol­nupi­ravir, known com­mer­cial­ly as Lagevrio, has strug­gled to make its way out of the in­ven­to­ry clos­et, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est num­bers post­ed by HHS.

On­ly about 20,000 cours­es of the Mer­ck pill were used in the past week, and on­ly about 13% of the to­tal US in­ven­to­ry of mol­nupi­ravir has been used to date. That com­pares with about 35% of over­all us­age of Paxlovid cours­es or­dered by states so far, and the bulk of those or­ders have come with­in the last sev­er­al months.

But for As­traZeneca’s pre­ex­po­sure mAb Evusheld, on­ly about 16,000 cours­es were ad­min­is­tered in the past week. About 38% of all Evusheld or­dered by states has been ad­min­is­tered so far, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est HHS num­bers.

For Eli Lil­ly’s bebtelovimab, which is a mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body that’s sup­posed to be used ahead of mol­nupi­ravir if both are on hand, about 100,000 cours­es in to­tal have been ad­min­is­tered of 379,526 cours­es or­dered (542,330 cours­es avail­able). Bebtelovimab is the fol­low-on mAb af­ter Lil­ly’s for­mer com­bo mAb (850,000+ cours­es dis­trib­uted ear­li­er in the pan­dem­ic) that lost ef­fi­ca­cy against the lat­est vari­ant.

Mean­while, HHS has be­come less and less trans­par­ent with its da­ta and in­for­ma­tion on its dis­tri­b­u­tion of Covid-19 ther­a­peu­tics.

Af­ter the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the be­gin­ning of the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion al­lowed for the pub­lic post­ing of week­ly calls be­tween HHS and states on Covid-19 ther­a­peu­tic dis­tri­b­u­tion, those calls have since been made pri­vate and the pri­or record­ings have been delet­ed from the AS­PR web­site.

In ad­di­tion, each week’s ther­a­peu­tic ad­min­is­tra­tion num­bers have to be tal­lied in­de­pen­dent­ly be­cause HHS now deletes the pre­vi­ous week’s num­bers.

Ed­i­tor’s note: Ar­ti­cle up­dat­ed to add Pfiz­er com­ment and note the stats for Lil­ly’s Covid-19 treat­ments bebtelovimab too.

The US government said late Wednesday that it will pay Pfizer and its partner BioNTech $3.2 billion upon receipt of the first 105 million Covid-19 vaccine doses, potentially the new Omicron-adapted boosters pending EUA.

Under this agreement, the US government also has the option to purchase up to 195 million additional doses, bringing the total number of potential new doses to 300 million. The US has now spent almost $15 billion on Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.

Lonza has been expanding its reach across the globe, bringing sites in China and the US online this year, but now they are looking closer to home for their next major investment.

The Swiss manufacturer on Friday announced plans to construct a large-scale commercial drug fill and finish facility in the town of Stein, Switzerland. The new facility will be delivered through an investment of approximately CHF 500 million, or $519 million, and is expected to be completed in 2026. The facility will also be constructed on the same campus as Lonza’s current clinical drug product facility.

Two weeks ago, Biohaven hit an all-time high in weekly Nurtec prescriptions. CEO Vlad Coric attributes at least some of that success to a new interactive Twitter campaign that encourages patients to free their feed of potential migraine triggers.

Earlier this month, Biohaven in partnership with Twitter launched the #RelieveYourFeed campaign that allows users to customize their app settings based on their migraine triggers.

Over the past few months, oncologists have been talking a lot about the ASCO conference. Not surprising considering its import and the study data presented, but what may be less expected is the second most talked about topic of health equity.

That’s according to data from The Harris Poll and the new expert network the researcher is building out. While the company has been doing deep data dives into specific health issues or conditions for pharma clients, it’s now monitoring influencer networks of therapy area specialists to find out what experts are really thinking about.