{"doi":"10.1101/2023.06.16.23288870","title":"The public health impact of Paxlovid COVID-19 treatment in the United States","abstract":"Abstract The antiviral drug Paxlovid has been shown to rapidly reduce viral load. Coupled with vaccination, timely administration of safe and effective antivirals could provide a path towards managing COVID-19 without restrictive non-pharmaceutical measures. Here, we estimate the population-level impacts of expanding treatment with Paxlovid in the US using a multi-scale mathematical model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission that incorporates the within-host viral load dynamics of the Omicron variant. We find that, under a low transmission scenario ( R e ∼ 1.2) treating 20% of symptomatic cases would be life and cost saving, leading to an estimated 0.26 (95% CrI: 0.03, 0.59) million hospitalizations averted, 30.61 (95% CrI: 1.69, 71.15) thousand deaths averted, and US$52.16 (95% CrI: 2.62, 122.63) billion reduction in health- and treatment-related costs. Rapid and broad use of the antiviral Paxlovid could substantially reduce COVID-19 morbidity and mortality, while averting socioeconomic hardship. Article Summary Line Mass treatment of symptomatic COVID-19 cases with antivirals that rapidly arrest SARS-CoV-2 replication would substantially reduce the spread and burden of the pandemic.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2023,"id":408759,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9512,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":228758,"name":"Zhanwei Du","orcid":"0000-0002-2020-767X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228759,"name":"Lin Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-5371-2138","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":32567,"name":"Eric H. Y. Lau","orcid":"0000-0002-6688-9637","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":513221,"name":"Isaac Chun‐Hai Fung","orcid":"0000-0001-5496-2529","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":510073,"name":"Petter Holme","orcid":"0000-0003-2156-1096","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":7164,"name":"Benjamin J. Cowling","orcid":"0000-0002-6297-7154","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":110265,"name":"Alison P. Galvani","orcid":"0000-0002-2059-6716","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":316487,"name":"Robert M. Krug","orcid":"0000-0002-3754-5034","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":110263,"name":"Lauren Ancel Meyers","orcid":"0000-0002-5828-8874","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":626045,"name":"Yuan Bai","orcid":"0000-0002-8468-8118","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":33,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:21:22.368387Z","pmid":"37732213","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}