Pfizer’s COVID pill is in short supply. Should unvaccinated be prioritized?
Global News
"Paxlovid is just yet another piece of the puzzle that helps us manage this illness in people who may be at more risk," said Dr. Gerald Evans of the new COVID-19 treatment.
With a limited supply of Pfizer’s new COVID-19 treatment, Paxlovid, bound for Canada, the country’s top doctors have identified groups that should be first in line to get the pills — including unvaccinated older Canadians.
Giving unvaccinated Canadians access to this COVID-19 medication isn’t only the right thing to do, it’s smart public health policy, says one bioethicist.
“It would be ethically unjustifiable, and it would not be scientifically sound to withhold this limited drug from unvaccinated people,” said Dr. Kerry Bowman, a bioethicist at the University of Toronto.
In clinical trial data submitted to Health Canada, the drug was found to reduce risk of hospitalization and death by 89 per cent, according to Dr. Supriya Sharma, Canada’s chief medical adviser.
Ethically speaking, Bowman explained, it’s “very dangerous” to make “judgments” about choices patients make, as well as “about how much health care they can receive based on the choices that they made.”
“It would be a dangerous precedent, and it’s not in alignment with the Canada Health Act,” Bowman said.
As for the science, keeping people out of the hospitals — unvaccinated or not — is key to emerging from the pandemic, he explained.
“From a triage point of view, (vaccination status) is not relevant information…we don’t want highly sick people in the intensive care unit with COVID that don’t have to be there,” Bowman said.