A new study from Epic Research shows that the anti-viral treatment Paxlovid can meaningfully reduce COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths— even among patients under the age of 65. The rapid treatment of high-risk patients with Paxlovid, as well as receipt of prior COVID-19 vaccination, can have a critical lifesaving benefit in preventing the potentially deadly effects of COVID-19.
Epic Research conducted an analysis of 567,560 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 who could have received the treatment between March 1 and August 1, 2022. The study found that:
Patients who received Paxlovid were two times less likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19 and four times less likely to die of COVID-19 than those who didn't.
Fully vaccinated patients over the age of 50 who received the treatment were about three times less likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19 than those who didn't.
Patients between the ages 40 and 49 who received the treatment are about two times less likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19 than those who didn't.
"Our study shows that Paxlovid helps to reduce COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations significantly," said Jackie Gerhart, vice president of clinical informatics at Epic and an author on the study. "We're sharing these findings to provide clinicians, policymakers, and patients timely access to actionable real-world data."
This study presents an analysis of data from Epic's Cosmos database, which allows researchers to study more than 163 million patient records that account for more than 5.7 billion healthcare encounters nationwide. Researchers and clinicians can leverage the depth, breadth, and representativeness of this data in a platform optimized for real-time queries, reducing the time it takes to answer many clinical questions.
Going forward, Epic Research and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are examining how risk factors like underlying conditions, race, and ethnicity might impact these findings. This ongoing research is in addition to a previous Epic Research-CDC collaboration, published in the Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report, in which Cosmos data was used to assess COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in patients who have already had COVID-19.
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