While the start of 2022 feels a little different from last year, with more information about vaccines, boosters, and new treatments for COVID-19, some things seem frustratingly the same. The spiraling cases and hospitalizations still signal distress in our nation, and there are still dire shortages of hospital beds in ICU units, test kits, as well as authorized COVID-19 drugs.

According to STAT, one of the most promising therapies for COVID-19 is Paxlovid, the oral antiviral medication developed by Pfizer for treating individuals ages 12 and up who test positive for the virus and are at increased risk for severe disease.

 Given emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration in December, it must be taken with another drug, ritonavir, which blocks the liver from rejecting it. The two-drug regimen reduced hospitalization by 90% and prevented death from COVID-19 in its clinical trials. Patients must take 30 pills over a five-day period, which needs to be started within five days of symptoms.

Recently, three separate lab studies confirmed that Paxlovid is effective against the omicron variant, says The Wall Street Journal.

However, Paxlovid necessitates a prescription and is extremely hard to find. Because it may have life-threatening interactions with other drugs, ideally it should be allotted to hospitals and healthcare systems that are equipped to handle adverse reactions and establish real eligibility of those who claim they need the drug. Instead, in many states, it is being sold through pharmacies that don’t have manpower or information-gathering ability, says STAT.

Another drawback, according to a reporter for The New York Times, who went on a desperate search to find Paxlovid for her high-risk 73-year-old mother who tested positive for the virus, is that doctors were reluctant to write a prescription for the drug. The reporter, Rebecca Robbins, even tried scheduling virtual medical visits for her mom through CVS and Teladoc but was told that they were not writing prescriptions for Paxlovid or molnupiravir, a similar antiviral pill from Merck. Both companies said they needed to see the patient in person, but her mother was unwilling to expose others to the virus.

Luckily, Robbins had found a Rite Aid about an hour from her mother’s house who had stock of the drug through a federal database of pharmacy chains, hospital systems and other providers that have placed orders for the pills. That evening a doctor affiliated with her mother’s primary care physician agreed to phone in the Paxlovid prescription to the Rite Aid. Her mother felt better within a few days.

Although the government has purchased enough Paxlovid for 20 million Americans to be distributed without cost, Robbins say her desperate search for the drug along with costs for telemedicine visits and an Uber fare to obtain the pills since her mom doesn’t drive made the quest a time-consuming and costly effort.

“President Biden recently called the Pfizer pills a ‘game changer,” she writes in the Times article. “My experience suggests it won’t be so simple.”