curious about who was actually prescribing paxlovid, i reached out to a toronto pharmacist that same week. his answer: the bulk of prescriptions were from a canadian private virtual health platform that offers access to online doctors for $50 a visit.
but what about the non-english speaking seniors who don’t own computers and can’t book online appointments? and those who don’t have the strength, money, family support or wherewithal to get themselves to an assessment centre? it’s a tall order having the very ill and elderly transport themselves to assessment centres in order to obtain medications which can keep them out of hospitals and reduce their risk of death.
given its current health-care crisis of understaffed hospitals and a lack of available beds, ontario should be doing everything it can to get paxlovid to these vulnerable individuals, ensuring that family doctors or nurse practitioners are prescribing the medication as they have been urged to do. this should not be relegated to the physicians who staff covid-19 assessment centres, leaving the elderly scrambling to obtain the medication — or simply giving up and experiencing potentially dire outcomes.
notably, in newfoundland and labrador, quebec, saskatchewan and alberta, where pharmacists were allowed this spring to prescribe paxlovid, there was a big pick-up in the use of the antiviral.