Rhode Island will launch the nation’s first federally funded COVID-19 test-to-treat center at a storefront clinic in Providence, Governor Daniel J. McKee and White House COVID-19 Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha, announced Thursday.
Clínica Esperanza, in the city’s Olneyville section, will allow eligible residents who have no insurance coverage to get the antiviral Paxlovid at no cost, removing a major barrier to treatment for residents in the community.
The clinic is located in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods that was among the hardest-hit by the virus. More than one-in-four people, on average, who got tested at the clinic during the past 12 months – 27% – were positive for COVID-19, Dr. Annie DeGroot, the clinic’s volunteer medical director, said. During the January surge, she said, the average test positivity rate was 67%.
“The population we serve is an extremely poor community [with] a lot of immigrants,’’ DeGroot said. “For people in this neighborhood there’s a real problem with access to care.”
The patients who get tested at the clinic generally have no insurance or not enough to cover the cost of Paxlovid, DeGroot said, which runs about $800 for the five-day treatment. About 80% of those tested at the clinic are uninsured or underinsured, she said, and all of the clinic’s regular patients have no coverage.
The Food and Drug Administration has authorized Paxlovid for anyone who is at increased risk of severe disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers anyone over 50 at increased risk of severe outcomes.
“We have got to make this disease something that doesn’t kill people in large numbers, that becomes truly preventable,’’ said Jha, speaking remotely during McKee’s news conference. “If you look at the data of Rhode Island…what you see is that there’s been a close to a three- four-fold increase in infections in cases over the last two months. But basically, very little change in severe illness and deaths have been relatively flat.”
Jha said that Rhode Island has “done an extraordinary job” of vaccinating residents and of “making therapeutics widely available.”
But disparities have persisted in the accessibility of those therapeutics, which health officials considered when choosing the location of the first test-to-treat center. While people in more affluent communities are more apt to know about Paxlovid and get the treatment from their primary care providers, residents in poorer immigrant neighborhoods are often unaware that they could qualify for the treatment, said Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, a public health advocate who serves on the clinic’s board of directors and the state Equity Council. He said one of the challenges is getting out information – and dispelling disinformation – about the available treatments.
Though Rhode Island has among the highest overall COVID-19 vaccination rates in the country, Rodriguez said, he worries as immunity wanes and much of the population has not been boosted. About 43% of white residents have received at least one booster dose, compared with just 28 percent of Hispanic/Latino residents, state data shows. If we see cases rising this spring, when people are outdoors, he said, what will happen when people go back indoors in the fall?
Health reporter Lynn Arditi can be reached at larditi@thepublicsradio.org. Follow her on Twitter @LynnArditi
This story has been updated.
