Getting antivirals for COVID too often depends on where you live and how wealthy you are

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Medical experts recommend antivirals for people aged 70 and older who get COVID, and for other groups at risk of severe illness and hospitalisation from COVID.

But many older Australians have missed out on antivirals after getting sick with COVID. It is yet another way the health system is failing the most vulnerable.

CGN089/Shutterstock

Who missed out?

We analysed COVID antiviral uptake between March 2022 and September 2023. We found some groups were more likely to miss out on antivirals including Indigenous people, people from disadvantaged areas, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Some of the differences will be due to different rates of infection. But across this 18-month period, many older Australians were infected at least once, and rates of infection were higher in some disadvantaged communities.

How stark are the differences?

Compared to the national average, Indigenous Australians were nearly 25% less likely to get antivirals, older people living in disadvantaged areas were 20% less likely to get them, and people with a culturally or linguistically diverse background were 13% less likely to get a script.

People in remote areas were 37% less likely to get antivirals than people living in major cities. People in outer regional areas were 25% less likely.

Dispensing rates by group. Grattan Institute

Even within the same city, the differences are stark. In Sydney, people older than 70 in the affluent eastern suburbs (including Vaucluse, Point Piper and Bondi) were nearly twice as likely to have had an antiviral as those in Fairfield, in Sydney’s south-west.

Older people in leafy inner-eastern Melbourne (including Canterbury, Hawthorn and Kew) were 1.8 times more likely to have had an antiviral as those in Brimbank (which includes Sunshine) in the city’s west.

Why are people missing out?

COVID antivirals should be taken when symptoms first appear. While awareness of COVID antivirals is generally strong, people often don’t realise they would benefit from the medication. They wait until symptoms get worse and it is too late.

Frequent GP visits make a big difference. Our analysis found people 70 and older who see a GP more frequently were much more likely to be dispensed a COVID antiviral.

Regular visits give an opportunity for preventive care and patient education. For example, GPs can provide high-risk patients with “COVID treatment plans” as a reminder to get tested and seek treatment as soon as they are unwell.

Difficulty seeing a GP could help explain low antiviral use in rural areas. Compared to people in major cities, people in small rural towns have about 35% fewer GPs, see their GP about half as often, and are 30% more likely to report waiting too long for an appointment.

Just like for vaccination, a GP’s focus on antivirals probably matters, as does providing care that is accessible to people from different cultural backgrounds.

Care should go those who need it

Since the period we looked at, evidence has emerged that raises doubts about how effective antivirals are, particularly for people at lower risk of severe illness. That means getting vaccinated is more important than getting antivirals.

But all Australians who are eligible for antivirals should have the same chance of getting them.

These drugs have cost more than A$1.7 billion, with the vast majority of that money coming from the federal government. While dispensing rates have fallen, more than 30,000 packs of COVID antivirals were dispensed in August, costing about $35 million.

Such a huge investment shouldn’t be leaving so many people behind. Getting treatment shouldn’t depend on your income, cultural background or where you live. Instead, care should go to those who need it the most.

Doctor types on laptop
Getting antivirals shouldn’t depend on who your GP is. National Cancer Institute/Unsplash

People born overseas have been 40% more likely to die from COVID than those born here. Indigenous Australians have been 60% more likely to die from COVID than non-Indigenous people. And the most disadvantaged people have been 2.8 times more likely to die from COVID than those in the wealthiest areas.

All those at-risk groups have been more likely to miss out on antivirals.

It’s not just a problem with antivirals. The same groups are also disproportionately missing out on COVID vaccination, compounding their risk of severe illness. The pattern is repeated for other important preventive health care, such as cancer screening.

A 3-step plan to meet patients’ needs

The federal government should do three things to close these gaps in preventive care.

First, the government should make Primary Health Networks (PHNs) responsible for reducing them. PHNs, the regional bodies responsible for improving primary care, should share data with GPs and step in to boost uptake in communities that are missing out.

Second, the government should extend its MyMedicare reforms. MyMedicare gives general practices flexible funding to care for patients who live in residential aged care or who visit hospital frequently. That approach should be expanded to all patients, with more funding for poorer and sicker patients. That will give GP clinics time to advise patients about preventive health, including COVID vaccines and antivirals, before they get sick.

Third, team-based pharmacist prescribing should be introduced. Then pharmacists could quickly dispense antivirals for patients if they have a prior agreement with the patient’s GP. It’s an approach that would also work for medications for chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease.

COVID antivirals, unlike vaccines, have been keeping up with new variants without the need for updates. If a new and more harmful variant emerges, or when a new pandemic hits, governments should have these systems in place to make sure everyone who needs treatment can get it fast.

In the meantime, fairer access to care will help close the big and persistent gaps in health between different groups of Australians.

Peter Breadon, Program Director, Health and Aged Care, Grattan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Relieve GERD and Acid Reflux with Stretches and Exercises

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    Looking for relief from GERD or acid reflux? Today we’re featuring an amazing video by Dr. Jo, packed with stretches and exercises designed to ease those symptoms.

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  • How Are You?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Answering The Most Difficult Question: How Are You?

    Today’s feature is aimed at helping mainly two kinds of people:

    • “I have so many emotions that I don’t always know what to do with them”
    • “What is an emotion, really? I think I felt one some time ago”

    So, if either those describe you and/or a loved one, read on…

    Alexithymia

    Alexi who? Alexithymia is an umbrella term for various kinds of problems with feeling emotions.

    That could be “problems feeling emotions” as in “I am unable to feel emotions” or “problems feeling emotions” as in “feeling these emotions is a problem for me”.

    It is most commonly used to refer to “having difficulty identifying and expressing emotions”.

    There are a lot of very poor quality pop-science articles out there about it, but here’s a decent one with good examples and minimal sensationalist pathologization:

    Alexithymia Might Be the Reason It’s Hard to Label Your Emotions

    A somatic start

    Because a good level of self-awareness is critical for healthy emotional regulation, let’s start there. We’ll write this in the first person, but you can use it to help a loved one too, just switching to second person:

    Simplest level first:

    Are my most basic needs met right now? Is this room a good temperature? Am I comfortable dressed the way I am? Am I in good physical health? Am I well-rested? Have I been fed and watered recently? Does my body feel clean? Have I taken any meds I should be taking?

    Note: If the answer is “no”, then maybe there’s something you can do to fix that first. If the answer is “no” and also you can’t fix the thing for some reason, then that’s unfortunate, but just recognize it anyway for now. It doesn’t mean the thing in question is necessarily responsible for how you feel, but it’s good to check off this list as a matter of good practice.

    Bonus question: it’s cliché, but if applicable… What time of the month is it? Because while hormonal mood swings won’t create moods out of nothing, they sure aren’t irrelevant either and should be listened to too.

    Bodyscanning next

    What do you feel in each part of your body? Are you clenching your jaw? Are your shoulders tense? Do you have a knot in your stomach? What are your hands doing? How’s your posture? What’s your breathing like? How about your heart? What are your eyes doing?

    Your observations at this point should be neutral, by the way. Not “my posture is terrible”, but “my posture is stooped”, etc. Much like in mindfulness meditation, this is a time for observing, not for judging.

    Narrowing it down

    Now, like a good scientist, you have assembled data. But what does the data mean for your emotions? You may have to conduct some experiments to find out.

    Thought experiments: what calls to you? What do you feel like doing? Do you feel like curling up in a ball? Breaking something? Taking a bath? Crying?

    Maybe what calls to you, or what you feel like doing, isn’t something that’s possible for you to do. This is often the case with anxiety, for example, and perhaps also guilt. But whatever calls to you, notice it, reflect on it, and if it’s something that your conscious mind considers reasonable and safe for you to do, you can even try doing it.

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    Practical experiments: whether you have a theory or just a hypothesis (if you have neither make up a hypothesis; that is also what scientists do), you can also test it:

    If in the previous step you identified something you’d like to do and are able to safely do it, now is the time to try it. If not…

    • Find something that is likely to (safely) tip you into emotional expression, ideally, in a cathartic way. But, whatever you can get is good.
      • Music is great for this. What songs (or even non-lyrical musical works) make you sad, happy, angry, energized? Try them.
      • Literature and film can be good too, albeit they take more time. Grab that tear-jerker or angsty rage-fest, and see if it feels right.
      • Other media, again, can be completely unrelated to the situation at hand, but if it evokes the same emotion, it’ll help you figure out “yes, this is it”.
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    Ride it out, wherever it takes you (safely)

    Feelings feel better felt. It doesn’t always seem that way! But, really, they are.

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    • If your body tells you something, then it’s good to acknowledge that and give it some reassurance by taking some action to appease it.
    • If your emotions are telling you something, then it’s good to acknowledge that and similarly take some action to appease it.

    There is a reason people feel better after “having a good cry”, or “pounding it out” against a punchbag. Even stress can be dealt with by physically deliberately tensing up and then relaxing that tension, so the body thinks that you had a fight and won and can relax now.

    And when someone is in a certain (not happy) mood and takes (sometimes baffling!) actions to stay in that mood rather than “snap out of it”, it’s probably because there’s more feeling to be done before the body feels heard. Hence the “ride it out if you safely can” idea.

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    For example, if you have to spend half an hour every day actively managing a certain emotion, that’s probably indicative of something unusual, but “unusual” is not inherently pathological. If you’re managing it safely and in a way that doesn’t negatively affect the rest of your life, then that is generally considered fine, unless you feel otherwise about it.

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  • 5 Self-Care Trends That Are Actually Ruining Your Mental Health

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    Ok, some of these are trends; some are more perennial to human nature. For example, while asceticism is not a new idea, the “dopamine detox” is, and “bed rotting” is not a trend that this writer has seen recommended anywhere, but on the other hand, there are medieval illustrations of it—there was no Netflix in sight in the medieval illustrations, but perhaps a label diagnosing it as “melancholy”, for example.

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    4. The Dopamine Myth
    5. Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety

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  • Reduce Your Stroke Risk

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    ❝Each year in the U.S., over half a million people have a first stroke; however, up to 80% of strokes may be preventable.❞

    ~ American Stroke Association

    Source: New guideline: Preventing a first stroke may be possible with screening, lifestyle changes

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    You cannot drink to your good health

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    Smoke now = stroke later

    This one is straightforward; smoking is bad for pretty much everything, and that includes stroke risk, as it’s bad for your heart and brain both, increasing stroke risk by 200–400%:

    Smoking and stroke: the more you smoke the more you stroke

    So, the advice here of course is: don’t smoke

    Diet matters

    The American Stroke Association’s guidelines recommend, just for a change, the Mediterranean Diet. This does not mean just whatever is eaten in the Mediterranean region though, and there are specifically foods that are included and excluded, and the ratios matter, so here’s a run-down of what the Mediterranean Diet does and doesn’t include:

    The Mediterranean Diet: What Is It Good For? ← what isn’t it good for?!

    You can outrun stroke

    Or out-walk it; that’s fine too. Most important here is frequency of exercise, more than intensity. So basically, getting those 150 minutes moderate exercise per week as a minimum.

    See also: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More

    Which is good, because it means we can get a lot of exercise in that doesn’t feel like “having to do” exercise, for example:

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    Your brain needs downtime too

    Your brain (and your heart) both need you to get good regular sleep:

    Sleep Disorders in Stroke: An Update on Management

    We sometimes say that “what’s good for your heart is good for your brain” (because the heart feeds the brain, and also ultimately clears away detritus), and that’s true here too, so we might also want to prioritize sleep regularity over other factors, even over duration:

    How Regularity Of Sleep Can Be Even More Important Than Duration ← this is about adverse cardiovascular events, including ischemic stroke

    Keep on top of your blood pressure

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    Consider GLP-1 receptor agonists (or…)

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    Better to know sooner rather than too late

    Rather than waiting until one half of our face is drooping to know that there was a stroke risk, here are things to watch out for to know about it before it’s too late:

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    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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