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City providers were eligible to order more than 20,088 courses of the two drugs, and they had more than 14,386 available on hand. Of that amount, local facilities could order 13,968 courses of molnupiravir and 12,013 were available in 11 sites. For Paxlovid, city providers could order 6,120 courses and had 2,373 on hand in six sites.
“We have enough supply to meet current demand and we are prepared to get more when needed,” said Michael Lanza, a spokesman for the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
When asked about getting the treatments into hands of New Yorkers, Lanza pointed to the free same-day, at-home delivery program for COVID treatments, established in January and conducted in partnership with Alto Pharmacy in Midtown. The company is the exclusive provider of the city’s supply of antiviral pills until the supply increases sufficiently to stock multiple pharmacy partners.
Alto’s availability of molnupiravir and Paxlovid outstripped other locations by far—as of March 2, it had 11,334 courses of molnupiravir and 2,010 courses of Paxlovid. The next closest facility with stockpiles on that scale was the Sunset Terrace Family Health Center at NYU Langone with just 400 courses of molnupiravir and BronxCare Medical and Dental at Poe with 200 courses of Paxlovid.
“Our city’s public healthcare system is seeing a decline in COVID-19 hospital admissions, but we are still very busy treating severely ill patients,” said Dr. Mitchell Katz, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, during the program’s launch. “Free at-home delivery of these antiviral pills will keep high-risk New Yorkers out of the hospital so we can immediately free up critical resources.”
This story first appeared in our sister publication, Crain’s New York Business.
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