Hartford HealthCare on Monday received its first shipment of Paxlovid, the new oral COVID-19 treatment from Pfizer, and is working on getting the prescription medication — currently in limited supply — to eligible patients.

"There's really never been a time like this, where we had multiple therapies, multiple medications, being rolled out that really benefit the public," Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief of infectious diseases for Hartford HealthCare, said in a briefing Tuesday. He added that the medicine "could potentially be a gamechanger," in that it will hopefully keep people out of the hospital and prevent them from dying.

But the treatment won't be widely available yet: Hartford HealthCare has 140 courses of treatment, so it's not like anybody can get a prescription. Wu also stressed that this isn't a substitute for vaccination.

"This is downstream. This is after the fact," he said. "This does not prevent you from getting COVID; it does not prevent you from spreading COVID to other people."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization last Wednesday for Paxlovid, which is meant to treat mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in people over age 12 who are at high risk for developing severe illness. The prescription medication is meant to be taken as soon as possible after diagnosis and within five days of developing symptoms.

Pfizer said in a study of 2,246 high-risk patients, Paxlovid was 89% effective in preventing hospitalization and death. A Pfizer senior vice president involved in the development of the treatment said she has "great confidence" Paxlovid will remain effective against the omicron variant of the coronavirus that causes the disease, STAT reported.

The FDA doesn't recommend Paxlovid for people with severe kidney or liver impairment, and a reduced dose is needed for people with moderate renal impairment. The drug also is risky to take with certain common medications.

For people to get a prescription, Wu said they would need to get a primary care referral to Hartford HealthCare's COVID triage clinic, which will determine whether they are eligible.

Wu said Hartford HealthCare's guidelines for eligibility are similar to those for existing monoclonal antibody treatments, where priority goes to people with ailments that severely hinder their immune system and people who are older.

Eric Arlia, vice president of pharmacy services for Hartford HealthCare, said while there are restrictions on who can get the treatment now, he thinks "it's going to feel a lot like the vaccines did during this time last year," where supply increases over time.

Arlia said the benefit of Paxlovid is that it can be taken at home, whereas monoclonal antibody treatments are administered at infusion centers. In addition, the federal government is pausing shipment of two of the three monoclonal antibody therapies, as they don't appear to be effective against the omicron variant.

But "the best medication that's available to you is the one that's available to you," Wu said, noting that he doesn't want people to wait for Paxlovid if a monoclonal treatment is available, considering Paxlovid is in short supply and time is of the essence when it comes to treatments.

Wu said Hartford HealthCare had 318 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 across its system Tuesday, an increase from the day before.

"The good news is that our ventilator and ICU numbers have flattened for a little bit, but as we always know, those numbers tend to lag the case numbers by about a week," he added. Wu said Hartford HealthCare still has capacity to care for COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients, and there are no plans at this point to cancel or defer elective procedures.

e.moser@theday.com