CDMX.- Six months have passed since Paxlovid, the antiviral to treat Covid-19, arrived in Mexico, but not even one percent of the 300,000 treatments that were purchased and in which 1.5 billion pesos were invested have been used.
Between June and December 2022 there were 6,148 deaths from Covid in the country.
Paxlovid was authorized by Cofepris a year ago (January 14, 2022) and acquired until July. On August 4, 2022, the first doses were delivered to INER.
“1,900 treatments have been used, that is, 0.6 percent; 60 percent have been administered at the IMSS, according to the Epidemiological Surveillance System for Respiratory Diseases,” reported staff from the Ministry of Health.
At the beginning of 2022, AMLO announced that the purchase of this drug was being analyzed, which, according to the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, reduces hospitalization and death in high-risk patients by almost 90 percent, if it is taken the first three days from the appearance of the symptoms. symptom.
The infectologist Alejandro Macías warned that Paxlovid is distributed in reference hospitals and institutions in the country “where it is of little use”, because it is not adequately supplied.
“For Paxlovid to be useful, it must be applied in the first 72 hours of COVID, in the first-level care office. In Mexico, it must be made available to first-contact doctors, since today it is distributed in reference hospitals and institutions,” he warned. on their social networks on December 21. Macías shared images of drugs that expired on January 1, 2023.
Drug expiration date extended by 6 months
The expiration of the drug Paxlovid, acquired by the federal government to treat cases of Covid-19, obtained an extension of useful life to 18 months granted by Cofepris, reported the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
“This extension applies to the batches that are currently circulating in the country and to the batches that will subsequently circulate in Mexico,” said the pharmaceutical company.
The initial expiration of Pfizer’s oral antiviral was 12 months, later it was extended to 18 months.
“This as a consequence of an analysis where additional data was collected, analyzed and presented to regulatory authorities around the world, including Cofepris,” it added.
This means that the lots that expired in January 2023 had their expiration extended by another six months, so they would expire until July 2023 and some, depending on the lot, until January 2024.
Gilberto Castañeda, an expert in pharmacology at Cinvestav, explained that when it comes to a common and current medicine that is well known, the expiration date cannot be extended; however, with emergency approvals, such as Paxlovid, which arose from the Covid-19 pandemic, this is possible.
“Paxlovid and other medicines that have arisen with Covid-19 are not in normal situations. The first authorization that is given to them and it is the one they currently have, is the emergency one; their distribution is also highly restricted.”
In these cases, he explained, it is considered that the benefit of the drug is greater than the risk, but there is a risk because little is known about the drug, so they put a very restricted expiration date on it.
“Once it’s in storage, the company continues to do tests and then it can say: ‘I had given an expiration date to cover myself, but we have realized that the drug lasts longer under these maintenance conditions’, and it is realized a new request to extend the expiration date,” the expert explained.
