Health minister says Coalition allowed drugs that can prevent severe cases and hospitalisation to ‘gather dust’ in storage
The health minister, Mark Butler, is working to determine whether the shelf life of remaining Covid treatments can be extended.The health minister, Mark Butler, is working to determine whether the shelf life of remaining Covid treatments can be extended.Just 20,000 of the 1m Paxlovid antiviral drugs ordered by the former government have been prescribed to Covid-19 patients, leaving Australia with hundreds of thousands of drugs due to expire within months.
The health minister, Mark Butler, has praised the “tremendous” increase in the number of Australians accessing the treatments, but that significant supplies are still available. He has also been critical of the Morrison government for allowing the drugs to “gather dust” in storage with very low initial take-up rates.While the department will not reveal how many of the oral antiviral treatments are still in national stockpiles, the former government ordered 1.
The low number of Paxlovid treatments prescribed could leave Australia with hundreds of thousands of drugs passed their use-by-date, with the medication having a shelf life of just nine months.early in the year, meaning many of these are likely to expire in the next few months. The former health minister, Greg Hunt, said the agreement with Pfizer would see another 500,000 arrive throughout the course of 2022.
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