Amid scarce supplies, some unvaccinated patients prioritized for COVID treatments

With omicron squeezing already limited medicines against COVID, doctors and patients are being forced to confront a thorny moral quandary: prioritizing the unvaccinated.

When retired four-star Gen. Pete Chiarelli tested positive for COVID-19, getting a treatment prescribed wasn't the problem. Filling it, and finding the therapies, was.

At 71, and having already been treated for high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation, though fully vaccinated, Chiarelli is at higher risk of severe COVID-19, and is eligible for the few treatments that have been shown to work against the omicron variant: one of the antiviral pills from Pfizer or Merck or the monoclonal antibody treatment sotrovimab, from Vir Biotechnology and GlaxoSmithKline.

Chiarelli was prescribed Paxlovid, Pfizer's antiviral pill, but he couldn't find a place to fill the prescription near his home in Oregon. He turned to Madigan Army Medical Center in Washington, which didn't have Paxlovid either -- but they had sotrovimab.

There, Chiarelli says he was told the precious little supply of that infusion was being saved for those considered even higher risk than him, including the unvaccinated.