{"id":695440,"date":"2026-05-26T10:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T10:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/695440\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T10:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T10:11:09","slug":"covid-19-antiviral-fails-to-reduce-deaths-or-hospitalisations-in-high-risk-vaccinated-patients-nejm-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/695440\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 antiviral fails to reduce deaths or hospitalisations in high-risk vaccinated patients: NEJM study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The antiviral nirmatrelvir\u2013ritonavir does not reduce hospitalisation or mortality rates in high-risk vaccinated patients with COVID-19, new research suggests.<\/p>\n<p>The Federal Government has spent an estimated $840 million on nirmatrelvir\u2013ritonavir (Paxlovid) through the PBS between 2022 and 2025, including 100,000 subsidised scripts last year for the medication, which costs about $1100 per course.<\/p>\n<p>A New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) paper published last month suggests that, while treatment was associated with faster recovery and reduced viral load, some 99.2% of high-risk patients avoid death or hospitalisation with usual care without medication.<\/p>\n<p>This was based on a total of 4232 patients aged 50 or older or with other risk factors \u2014 3516 from the UK PANORAMIC trial and 716 from the Canadian CanTreatCOVID trial.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\u00d7<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tSign in\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"d-none message adg-password-reset\">\n\t\t\t\tIf this is your first visit to the new AusDoc website, reset your password<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<a class=\"adg-reset_password_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ausdoc.com.au\/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">here.<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The antiviral nirmatrelvir\u2013ritonavir does not reduce hospitalisation or mortality rates in high-risk vaccinated patients with COVID-19, new research&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,7273,339215,137,490,44],"class_list":["post-695440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19-therapy","tag-health","tag-medication","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}