Coronavirus drug Paxlovid reaches Estonia's pharmacies
The coronavirus drug Paxlovid has reached Estonian pharmacies, a year later than originally scheduled. The medicine has been used in hospitals since the turn of the year.
Igor Ljapin, the Health Fund's head of public relations, told ERR on Monday: "The medicine has reached pharmacies, but we would like to stress once again that this is a prescription medicine prescribed by a doctor to patients at risk who have been diagnosed with COVID-19."
Four thousand packs of Paxlovid arrived in the country in December but they took several weeks to reach pharmacy shelves.
Estonia purchased the drug as part of the EU's joint procurement and negotiations took longer than expected.
The Health Board's Ragnar Vaiknemets told ERR in the summer that coronavirus could potentially be reclassified as a common infectious disease when Paxloiud and other medications become widely available.
He said viruses are categorized as "new and dangerous infectious diseases", as COVID-19 currently is, because there are no widely available effective treatments.
Ljapin said the best way to protect yourself against coronavirus is still vaccination.
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Editor: Aleksander Kryukov, Helen Wright
