Corona drugs are gathering dust on the shelf: Regensburg pharmacist explains

Created: 04/20/2022, 19:15

By: Thomas Eldersch

Great hopes also rested on medicines in the fight against the corona pandemic.

Now they are on the market, but no one seems to need them anymore.

Regensburg – Since the start of the corona pandemic a good two years ago, we have been working flat out to get the potentially deadly disease under control.

Measures have been taken and rules enacted.

The approval of the corona vaccines then became a game changer.

Another mainstay that the pharmaceutical industry and physicians relied on was the approval of a drug against Corona.

Now there are such means, but no one wants them anymore.

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Corona drugs came too late to break the winter wave

The Federal Ministry of Health ordered one million doses of the corona drug Paxlovid from the American manufacturer Pfizer at the beginning of the year.

The BR found out that doctors have prescribed it 8,700 times to date.

The situation is no different for the other brands.

The regional pharmacy spokesman for the Upper Palatinate, Josef Kammermeier from Regensburg, knows why.

When the situation was still tense - at the turn of the year - and many people had to be treated in intensive care units, the supply on the German market got off to a slow start.

Here, however, the demand was greatest, the spokesman told BR.

Now the omicron variant dominates, and it is mostly associated with mild courses.

Here, a simple painkiller such as paracetamol would often be sufficient for treatment.

Corona drugs: side effects and narrow target group as problem factors

But it's not just the corona variant that is now predominant that makes the funds almost obsolete.

Side effects and a relatively specific group of people for whom the drugs are intended further limit the usefulness.

In addition, it must be administered within the first five days to achieve the maximum benefit.

Interactions with other drugs are particularly dangerous.

This means that the prescribing doctor must be very careful that there are no cardiological, pneumological, urological or neurological restrictions, so Kammermeier to the BR.

The drugs are primarily only intended for patients with risk factors such as old age, obesity, diabetes, cancer, cardiopulmonary diseases and a weak immune system.

So a manageable group of people.

These funds are “not a way to overcome a pandemic, but the vaccination is,” summarizes Kammermeier.

Many physicians in Bavaria should now agree with him.

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