Dr. Fauci says he believes Paxlovid kept him out of the hospital, even though he tested positive again.

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Thu, 2022-06-30 10:32 — mike kraft

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s top medical adviser for the coronavirus pandemic, sought on Wednesday to discourage doubts about the antiviral drug Paxlovid after disclosing that he had suffered what appeared to be a “rebound” of Covid-19 after taking a five-day course of the pills.

“Paxlovid did what it was supposed to do,” Dr. Fauci, 81, said in an interview, saying that he believed that the treatment, made by Pfizer, kept him out of the hospital when he first tested positive for the virus on June 15. He added that he thought the drug also reduced the severity of his initial symptoms.

One thing Paxlovid could not do was keep Dr. Fauci from missing his daughter’s wedding. It went on without him in New Orleans two Saturdays ago, when he was sidelined with his initial infection. He participated remotely.

Dr. Fauci has been vaccinated against Covid and has received two booster doses. His experience with Paxlovid adds to a growing body of anecdotal evidence about patients whose Covid symptoms improved after they took Paxlovid, and who even tested negative, only to have symptoms occur again a few days later. That is exactly what happened to him, Dr. Fauci said; he recently tested positive again after three days of negative tests.

In late May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention addressed what it called “the potential for recurrence of Covid-19 or ‘Covid-19 rebound.’” It issued an emergency health advisory that described the phenomenon as “a recurrence of symptoms or a new positive viral test after having tested negative” when the initial diagnosis was in the past two weeks.

The agency advised that people experiencing the rebound “should restart isolation and isolate again for at least 5 days” in line with the agency’s isolation recommendations for infected patients, regardless of whether they might have gotten antiviral treatment or isolated after the initial infection.

The advisory noted that “a brief return of symptoms may be part of the natural history of” coronavirus infection in some people, independent of Paxlovid treatment and regardless of vaccination status. It also said that based on some case reports, the rebound did not represent reinfection with the coronavirus, or the development of resistance to Paxlovid.

The C.D.C. said that Paxlovid “continues to be recommended for early-stage treatment of mild to moderate Covid-19 among persons at high risk for progression to severe disease.” The Food and Drug Administration authorized Paxlovid for high-risk people age 12 and older who weigh at least 88 pounds.

For his part, Dr. Fauci tested positive for the coronavirus about two weeks ago after experiencing a “scratchy throat.” He described his initial symptoms as mild, adding that he did not “feel ill.” He began a five-day course of Paxlovid. (“I’m 81 years old, which is a considerable risk factor,” he explained.) After that, he tested negative for three days in a row.

But on the fourth day, he said, he was “surprised and disappointed” to see that he had tested positive again, and he suffered a recurrence of symptoms, he said, that were worse than before, including a low fever, achiness, a runny nose and a “mild cough.”

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