Covid-19 vaccines, drugs and tests are putting the U.S. in an improved position to pull back on restrictions such as masking that were enacted to limit the spread of the virus, White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci said.
Covid drugs like Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid that keep high-risk patients from hospitalization and death are becoming plentiful as production ramps up, Fauci said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “The Close.”
Many states have already dropped rules for mask-wearing, and officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are poised to update federal masking guidelines as cases driven by the omicron variant plummet across the country.
“If you combine vaccination, the availability of good antivirals, monoclonal antibodies that we will continue to develop, and the wide availability of tests,” Fauci said, “I think we are in a much better position right now to deal, not only with the ability to pull back on mitigations,” but to combat future variants.
Pfizer’s treatment for high-risk patients is in high demand, promising to make the pandemic easier to live with. The drug reduced the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% in patients with mild-to-moderate disease, and must be given within five days of the onset of symptoms.
Although right now availability of the pill is somewhat limited, there will be “a lot more available as the months go by,” Fauci said. “There’s enough out there, certainly, to get to the people who would need them at high risk.”
— With assistance by David Westin, and Romaine Bostick