The one drug available to treat Covid is hard to find as the virus is on the rise again.

The U.S. pandemic emergency ended in May 2023, but the Covid-19 virus continues to mutate and spread, recently due to a highly infectious family of variants dubbed FLiRT. The variants aren’t causing a high number of hospitalizations or deaths but it is producing more severe fatigue and sore throats, according to infectious disease experts.

The very drug that can alleviate those symptoms and shorten the illness, Paxlovid, is in short supply.

It’s not that the company that makes the drug, Pfizer, isn’t producing enough of it. It’s that it’s charging an enormous amount for it. The average wholesale price as of July 8 was $1,743 for a five-day course. “It’s unreasonably expensive,” says Jasmine Chan, pharmacist and owner of Central Avenue Pharmacy in Pacific Grove.

If Chan wants to carry it, she has to purchase it up front. The federal funding that enabled Chan to be reimbursed for its cost ended last November, and now she depends on insurance companies to reimburse her, but it’s usually a small amount. “Some are even underpaying,” she says. “Now I’m paying your insurance for you to have Paxlovid.”

As a small business, Chan says it’s nearly impossible to afford keeping it in stock, although she says she wants to. “It’s the right thing to do,” she says.

There was a run on Paxlovid locally in mid-June, which is around the time Pacific Grove’s own infectious disease expert, Dr. David C. Wright, began seeing more patients with Covid. He says no drug store in P.G. carried it but found it at larger chain stores elsewhere.

The drug is still free this year for those who qualify, and available at a reduced price for others. More info is available at paxlovid.com/paxcess.