US Covid sufferers to now receive immediate anti-viral pills as Biden ditches track and trace

White House uses State of the Union to announce shift on Covid strategy

President Joe Biden is making a noticeable shift in the US’s Covid-19 policies away from policies like contact tracing and towards a surge in availability of new treatments for the virus.

Mr Biden’s Covid-19 response team held a press briefing on Wednesday morning after the president’s speech the night before and laid out the White House’s new “preparedness” plan for responding to future outbreaks of the virus.

Among the strategies being embraced by the White House are antiviral pills that battle the disease and in many cases prevent its worst symptoms in Covid-positive persons, which White House Covid coordinator Jeff Zients called a “game-changer” in the battle against the pandemic at Wednesday’s event.

“Pfizer’s pill is a game-changer. 90 per cent effective at keeping people out of the hospital,” said Mr Zients.

“This month alone, the month of March, we’ll have 1 million treatment courses available. In April, that number will more than double,” he continued.

The federal government will make the antiviral pills produced by Pfizer available for free to Americans who test positive at pharmacies and health centres that participate in the effort, the White House said this week.

The federal government is surging production of both the anti-viral treatments for Covid-19 as well as the vaccines that millions of Americans have now received as the effort to vaccinate young children continues. The Biden administration’s new plan calls for the production of vaccines in the US to be raised to one billion vaccine doses per year, far more than enough for the entire US population, as the US increases its efforts to eradicate or significantly reduce levels of Covid-19 around the globe.

“Vaccines, treatments, tests, mask. These tools are how we continue to protect people. They enable us to move forward safely, and get back to our more normal routines. Going out to eat at a restaurant. Taking that trip that’s been long-delayed,” said Mr Zients on Wednesday.

Masking, however, is being decidedly less emphasised for Americans as Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines have put much of America on the path to demasking for indoor public areas, with the exceptions being medical centres and public transit.

Also gone by the boards is contact tracing, which is no longer being mentioned as a necessary strategy as the government shifts to making treatments widespread and free of charge. Health officials hope the availability of the treatments will mean that even those who are unvaccinated will still be able to obtain some level of protection against the virus and potentially avoid hospitalisation if they test positive.

The lengthy White House plan released on Wednesday is a marked shift from where America was just two years ago, when then-President Donald Trump was still publicly denying that Covid would be a serious problem in the US and White House officials including the president were often seen maskless and not practising social distancing at indoor events long before a vaccine or any over-the-counter treatments for the disease were readily available.

Polls have indicated that Mr Biden’s marks for his handling of the pandemic have slipped since his election in November in 2020 as more and more Americans grow frustrated about the persistence of both the virus itself and its related restrictions on public life.