Beijing —
After two more days of frantic calls to families and friends, a contact finally found them a space at another hospital, but it took a further antigen test and second CT scan before it agreed to prescribe the drug. Having been approved in February last year, Paxlovid was scarcely used in China until December when the government started lifting its strict containment policy, and wave of Covid-19 infections began to build.Chinese authorities have acknowledged that supplies of Paxlovid are still insufficient to meet demand, even as Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said last week that thousands of courses of the treatment were shipped to the country in 2022 and in the past couple of weeks millions more were shipped.
But China doesn’t provide data on how many treatment courses are supplied and where it can be purchased, forcing most patients to rely on media reports, word-of-mouth or even importing through unauthorised channels in the grey market.