Israel rolls out Pfizer pill, using digital health records to ID those most at risk

JERUSALEM » As Omicron infections surge, Israel has begun rolling out a newly approved Pfizer drug, using digital health records kept on nearly every citizen to identify those who are at high risk from covid-19 and likely to benefit most from the treatment even before they become dangerously ill.

Israel is one of the first countries to put Pfizer’s Paxlovid anti-viral pill into use, and doctors affiliated with the four publicly funded health care networks are now dispensing more than 100 courses a day, less than a week after the pill won approval here.

The drug is being dispatched to qualified patients’ homes almost as soon as they test positive for the virus.

Israeli health officials say it is too soon to tell whether the treatment is heading off serious illness in significant numbers. But none of the recipients - all of whom are immune-compromised or otherwise deemed at the highest risk - have yet needed to be hospitalized, according to Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest HMO covering almost half the population.

In clinical trials, Pfizer reported that the pill reduced death and hospitalizations by 89%.

Some medical experts have hailed the new covid treatment as a significant breakthrough and a last line of defense when the virus has dodged vaccines, boosters and masks to infect a highly vulnerable person.

“It’s a very promising drug,” said Ian Miskin, an infectious-disease specialist who oversees the Paxlovid program at Clalit. “This gives us something to turn to when everything else has failed.”