--- title: Paxlovid Is Most Effective in People 65 and Up, Study Finds description: An Israeli study published Aug. 24 provides important data on who could benefit most from the antiviral treatment Paxlovid. canonical: https://time.com/6208336/paxlovid-effective-older-adults/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-08-24T23:48:43.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:38:50.109Z article:section: Health og:title: Paxlovid Is Far More Effective in Seniors Than in People Under 65, Study Finds og:description: An Israeli study published Aug. 24 provides important data on who could benefit most from the antiviral treatment og:url: https://time.com/6208336/paxlovid-effective-older-adults/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0ad4b37e1bced6da/698a34ddb21a9c1f4b506582/GettyImages-1407371830.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: COVID-19-treatment-Paxlovid og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Paxlovid Is Far More Effective in Seniors Than in People Under 65, Study Finds twitter:description: An Israeli study published Aug. 24 provides important data on who could benefit most from the antiviral treatment twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0ad4b37e1bced6da/698a34ddb21a9c1f4b506582/GettyImages-1407371830.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Paxlovid Is Far More Effective in Seniors Than in People Under 65, Study Finds > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=1f99e0a4-0a14-4e6d-bf90-a13b6aab3e4c&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: These Virus Hunters Want to Stop Future Pandemic Threats [Watch (HLS stream): These Virus Hunters Want to Stop Future Pandemic Threats](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/cuwedOEw.m3u8) (5:30)  _Published 2022-07-29. Abbot’s Pandemic Defense Coalition is the first public-private effort led by industry to bring scientists around the world together to track current and emerging pathogens. The team is collecting virus samples from all over the world, searching for mutations, and so far they managed to alert the world to several that have swept the globe—including Gamma from a lab in Brazil and Omicron from a lab in South Africa._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Aug 24, 2022 11:48 PM UTC  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Aug 24, 2022 11:48 PM UTC Taking the antiviral treatment [Paxlovid](https://time.com/6198667/paxlovid-who-should-take-covid-19/) can reduce a person’s chances of getting seriously ill from COVID-19\. But while seniors tend to get impressive protection from the pills, younger people derive little benefit, finds new research. In a [study](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2204919) published Aug. 24 in the _New England Journal of Medicine_, researchers in Israel provide valuable real-world data on how effective the pills are against Omicron. The researchers studied data from 109,000 patients at a large health care organization—nearly all of whom had been vaccinated, had been previously infected, or both—and tracked their hospitalization and death rates by age. Nearly 4,000 people in the study, which was conducted from January to March 2022, took Paxlovid. People who were 65 or older had a 73% lower chance of being hospitalized for COVID-19 and about a 79% lower chance of dying of the disease, compared to people in the same age group who did not take Paxlovid. But people ages 40 to 64 experienced no statistically significant drop in the risk of hospitalization or death. Based on the findings, the authors conclude that “no evidence of benefit was found in younger adults.” To qualify for Paxlovid, patients must be at elevated risk of developing serious illness from COVID-19\. Risk factors include older age, as well as conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and a history of heart and kidney failure. But the Israeli data suggest that age may be an even more important consideration for evaluating who should take it. While the benefits are clear for seniors, the findings throw into question whether taking the drug is worth it for people under 65\. It comes with potential side effects, including diarrhea, muscle aches, an increase in blood pressure, and an aftertaste so bad that it can temporarily affect some people’s ability to eat. Paxlovid also interacts with common medications, such as cholesterol-lowering statins, so some doctors advise patients to stop or reduce those medications during the five-day Paxlovid course. And there are increasing reports that people taking Paxlovid are likely to experience a [rebound infection](https://time.com/6181388/paxlovid-rebound-what-to-know/), or having the virus re-emerge after they stop taking the pills. One caveat of the study is that the researchers did not break down data on younger people with cancer and other severe immunocompromising conditions, who may be more likely than other young people to benefit from Paxlovid—perhaps to a greater extent than the data showed. As more people take the medications, doctors will have a better understanding of who will benefit most, and for whom the benefits outweigh the risks. ## Transcript Finding a new virus or different strains of an existing one is like searching for a needle in a haystack. And when the haystack is, as big as the planet, it takes a really good microscope and a large coordinate a team. here is a scientist to dreams of the pandemics were living with like stars Cove to or covid-19. And that's where we're trying to understand what could potentially become the next pandemic in the future for the painful. Few years that we've all lived through this another pandemic. So we need to do to learn the lessons and not reinvent the wheel. After March of 2020 and wave after wave of new variants of covid-19, researchers realize they needed a better way to stay ahead of a virus that doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon, Abbott's. Pandemic defense Coalition, is the first public-private effort led by industry to bring scientist together to track current and emerging pathogens. The team is collecting virus samples from all over the world and searching for mutations so far they managed to alert the world to several that have Globe including gamma from a lab in Brazil and Omicron from a lab in South Africa. The whole process start to finish begins with a collaborator in a site that collecting samples from people who've been tested for covid and once they get a result, I want to know what strain was present in the sample after an inactivation step. We take the sample itself and remove everything else about the sample of stuff. For the nucleic acid, which is where the Genome of the material that we can use to either determine how much is there a virus, or we can use that material to the sequence and determine the coronavirus is constantly mutating, but not all of its changes are important. One of the most difficult aspects of staying ahead of the virus is figuring out which of these could become a threat to Public Health. The virus is in charge here. It's still surprising us. Abbott's. Pandemic defense Coalition is a network of experts in infectious disease, genetic sequencing, phylogenetics and epidemiology they have more than a dozen Partners. On five continents, who work to collect samples, test them, and share the data among themselves and with other public health, and political leaders around the world. Researchers say the data collected from sequencing can help them to ensure that tests for detecting the virus continue to work. So people will know when they are infected. Even with newer variance and take proper safety measures like isolating and wearing masks to buy having a network eyes in the field boots on the ground that will spot the trans. Identify the cases enable us in real time to share information, sequence, samples. And also. Rebuild diagnostic test that can then be distributed background or seen something in South Paulo are we also seeing it in Thailand? That type of information is critical to have quickly so that different countries can prepare and respond. We're building this coke capability and capacity at our partner sites around the world as it is limited and need worshipping of samples. That information is shared through the cloud, excetera, as of November 2021 Abbott's. Pandemic defense Coalition has analyzed over 1.4 million sequences from 63 different variants and it's clear they won't be done anytime soon. And silently, once we have all that amount of data, we don't have a pipeline of five, a Matic tools that can quickly identify if maybe there's just a Test for it or maybe there's something that's completely novel. And that's where diagnostic tests are really important early on. As we have Dal, you ate that and help Public Health responses accordingly. This is one of the main focuses of the Abbot pandemic defense Coalition, is to democratize the knowledge and the expertise that we've developed over the decades here, to our partners, around the world to build the next generation of virologist. A virus Hunter is an epidemiologist. I think that's critical preventing the next. 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