Minnesotan credits COVID-19 pills for saving his life

Nearly 12,000 Minnesotans will soon be able to take new antiviral pills to treat COVID-19.

The Minnesota Department of Health confirms the state has received 2,240 patient courses of Pfizer’s pill Paxlovid and 9,500 patient courses of Merck’s pill Molnupiravir.

The antivirals are expected to remain in short supply in the coming weeks, so the pills are not available to the general public.

Hospitals are currently prioritizing patients at high risk of hospitalization or death from the virus.

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS spoke to a Minnesotan who just finished taking the pills and believes they may have saved his life.

"To be point-blank, I don’t know how long I could have kept breathing," Jeff Carlson, of Vadnais Heights, said.

Carlson said he started showing symptoms of COVID-19 on Jan. 13 with chills, body aches, a sore throat and a headache. By Jan. 15, he spiked a 102-degree fever and experienced severe difficulty breathing.

The 61-year-old, who has Type 1 diabetes, said his blood sugar also became unmanageable and he had to dispense five times the amount of insulin he normally uses to keep his levels acceptable.

"I was getting more and more sick," Carlson explained. "It was a very difficult struggle for me, with how hard COVID had a grip on me."

After testing positive with a PCR test, Carlson said he received a call from his doctor at M Health Fairview, who informed him he had been selected to try Merck’s antiviral pill, Molnupiravir, since he was considered a "high-risk" patient.

"We actually do it on an invitation basis, based on the highest-risk people who test positive," said Dr. Bryan Jarabek, chief medical informatics officer and hospitalist at M Health Fairview.

M Health Fairview was able to start providing the pills as a treatment option on Jan. 5 after receiving its first allotment from the state.

The hospital system has given out 61 courses of Paxlovid and 31 courses of Molnupiravir so far.

"I definitely remember the first one. We celebrated what was going on because what a historic thing," Jarabek said. "That first patient, I remember they came back and said, ‘It’s amazing. Two days after this, I feel better!’ So this could be a real game-changer."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Merck COVID-19 pills have been shown to cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 30%. Molnupiravir is given as 40 pills over the course of five days.

Pfizer’s pills have been shown to reduce hospitalization and death by up to 88%. Paxlovid is given as 30 pills over the course of five days.

Both pills need to be started within five days of symptom onset and before the patient’s condition declines to the point of being hospitalized.

"The real challenge for us has been that not everybody can get this because it’s in such a limited supply, so we have to do a lot of work behind the scenes," Jarabek explained. "We’ve made a process where we can kind of score patients and assess who’s most at risk for getting hospitalized from this, so we can get them the treatments and really reduce the major outcomes."

He said, generally speaking, the pills are being prioritized for people over the age of 65 with comorbidities, such as heart disease, lung disease or diabetes.

"We look forward to continuing to get more supply and being able to make this available for more and more patients in the future," Jarabek said. "We all just want to envision a future where people can get treated and not have to end up in the hospital with COVID, so this is something that lets us do that."

Carlson said he felt significantly better less than 24 hours after his first dose of Molnupiravir.

"To me, this was almost like a miraculous drug, a miraculous outcome," Carlson said. "Without having this as an option, I would have been in the hospital. There’s absolutely no question about it. I noticed my breathing was better. I noticed the pressure in my lungs, the burning was subsiding. On Friday, I could not get out of bed. I couldn’t get off the couch. I couldn’t breathe. By Sunday at 5 o’clock, I was shoveling my driveway."

Carlson said he plans to do a 25-mile bike ride this weekend, two days after completing his pill series.

"Three months ago, four months ago, without this, where would I have been? I would have been one of those people in the hospital taking up a bed with an outcome that was unknown. I’m the luckiest guy in the world," Carlson said.

Hospital systems in the metro reiterate there still are not many of these pills available.

HealthPartners expects its current supply of Paxlovid to be exhausted by Sunday and its supply of Molnupiravir to be depleted in the next week or two.

MDH said the pills from both Pfizer and Merck are distributed to Minnesota every two weeks, although officials don’t know how many doses to expect in the next allotment.

Jarabek expects the antiviral pills may not be widely available for the general public until May or June.

Click here for more information on the COVID-19 treatments available in Minnesota.