Abstract
Background
Paxlovid was granted emergency use authorization for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19, based on the interim analysis of EPIC-HR trial. Paxlovid effectiveness needs to be assessed in a noncontrolled setting. In this study we used population-based real world data to evaluate the effectiveness of Paxlovid.
Methods
The database of the largest healthcare provider in Israel was used to identify all adults aged 18 years or older with first ever positive test for SARS-CoV-2 between January and February 2022, who were at high risk for severe COVID-19 and had no contraindications for Paxlovid use. Patients were included irrespective of their COVID-19 vaccination status. Cox hazard regression was used to estimate the 28 day HR for severe COVID-19 or mortality with Paxlovid examined as time-dependent variable.
Results
Overall, 180,351 eligible were included, of them only 4,737 (2.6%) were treated with Paxlovid , and 135,482 (75.1%) had adequate COVID-19 vaccination status. Both Paxlovid and adequate COVID-19 vaccination status were associated with significant decrease in the rate of severe COVID-19 or mortality with adjusted HR 0.54 (95% CI, 0.39-0.75) and 0.20 (95% CI, 0.17-0.22), respectively. Paxlovid appears to be more effective in older patients, immunosuppressed patients, and patients with underlying neurological or cardiovascular disease (interaction p-value <0.05 for all). No significant interaction was detected between Paxlovid treatment and COVID-19 vaccination status.
Conclusions
This study suggests that in the era of omicron and in real life setting Paxlovid is highly effective in reducing the risk of severe COVID-19 or mortality.
