COVID-19 antivirals: Doctors clash over PBS eligibility
'We’ve got nothing but telling people to take a Panadol and pray', Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah says.
Leading doctors have clashed over eligibility criteria for COVID-19 antivirals — specifically nirmatrelvir–ritonavir — following claims many patients were being “short-changed” and left unprotected.
Federal Labor MP and infectious diseases physician Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah said she had recently paid more than $1100 for an unspecified antiviral for a sick family member who was ineligible for a PBS-subsidised script.
She is now calling on her own government to expand publicly-funded access to nirmatrelvir–ritonavir (Paxlovid) to all patients aged 12 and older.
“The restrictions on them, in the face of mounting morbidity of long COVID and post-COVID complications are daft in the extreme,” she said on Twitter this week.
