Simply after 1 p.m. on Tuesday final week, my telephone buzzed with a textual content message from my mom: “Neatly, got here down with chilly, aches, cough and so forth over wknd.” She had taken an at-home coronavirus take a look at. It used to be certain.

Having spent the previous yr writing about Covid-19 vaccines and coverings for The New York Instances, I knew so much in regards to the choices to be had to other folks like my mom. But I used to be about to head on a seven-hour odyssey that will display me there used to be so much I didn’t grab.

My mom, Mary Ann Neilsen, is totally vaccinated, together with a booster shot, which sharply lowered the chances that she would change into critically in poor health from the virus. However she has a number of threat components that frightened me. She’s 73. She has two times overwhelmed breast most cancers.

Her age and most cancers historical past made her eligible to obtain the newest remedies which were proven to stave off the worst results from Covid. The difficulty, as I knew from my reporting, used to be that those remedies — together with monoclonal antibody infusions and antiviral capsules — are onerous to come back by means of.

Call for for the medicine is surging because the Omicron variant of the coronavirus infects report numbers of American citizens. However provides are scarce. The 2 most generally used antibody manufacturers don’t seem to paintings in opposition to Omicron, and the antiviral capsules are so new and had been evolved so briefly that no longer many have reached hospitals and pharmacies.

I got down to observe down one in every of two remedies: GlaxoSmithKline’s antibody infusion or Pfizer’s antiviral capsules, referred to as Paxlovid. Each had been discovered to be protected and extremely protecting in opposition to critical Covid when given to high-risk sufferers inside a couple of days of the onset of signs. Each are potent in opposition to Omicron.

One in all my first steps used to be to go looking on-line for lists of pharmacies and clinics close to my mom’s domestic in Santa Barbara, Calif., that may have some of the medication in inventory. (I reside in Washington State, so my quest used to be performed, like such a lot else nowadays, remotely.)

Some states, like Tennessee and Florida, have helpful on-line gear for locating a facility with monoclonal antibodies in inventory. However I couldn’t in finding one for California. I checked a federal database, which had just one record inside 25 miles of my mom.

After I referred to as that well being device, I used to be instructed that it had run out.

I additionally looked for Paxlovid. From my reporting, I knew a couple of federal database of pharmacy chains, health facility techniques and different suppliers that experience positioned orders for the capsules. A Instances colleague downloaded the knowledge, as someone can do, and despatched it to me in a extra simply searchable structure.

The record grew to become up just a few probabilities, most commonly pharmacies, close to my mom. I dialed the nearest one, a CVS, however an worker knowledgeable me that the shop had briefly run out of the primary cargo of capsules and didn’t know when extra would come.

After a couple of extra calls, I discovered a Ceremony Assist, greater than an hour’s pressure from my mom’s condo, that had Paxlovid in inventory. The drugstore warned me that the provision used to be going speedy.

Nonetheless, this used to be just right information. I figured I had simply surmounted the hardest impediment, and most effective two hours had handed since my mom examined certain. Now I simply had to get her a prescription.

I had already requested my mom to name her physician’s place of job and request a telephone name along with her doctor so she may ask for a prescription for some of the remedies. She reported again to me that the receptionist had instructed her that they “don’t do” both the Glaxo or Pfizer remedies.

That didn’t make sense to me: The Meals and Drug Management has approved the medicine. Why wouldn’t docs be prescribing them? Pissed off, I referred to as her physician’s place of job to get an evidence. (I didn’t establish myself as a Instances reporter, in that telephone name or the others I made that day, partially as a result of I didn’t need to create the semblance of searching for preferential remedy.)

The worker who responded the telephone instructed me that the docs there had but to behavior their very own scientific overview of Paxlovid and, as a question of coverage, may no longer but prescribe it. Additionally, the worker instructed me, my mom would wish an appointment to talk to a physician, and there have been no slots till per week later.

I started attempting to find any other physician who would promptly write a prescription.

I attempted scheduling visits with a number of telemedicine suppliers, together with CVS and Teladoc, however I stored seeing a in a similar way worded notification at the consumption bureaucracy: They weren’t writing prescriptions for Paxlovid or molnupiravir, a equivalent antiviral tablet from Merck.

(Later, I requested each corporations about those insurance policies. A CVS spokeswoman stated suppliers had been prescribing the antiviral capsules to sufferers they noticed in individual at some shops however no longer by way of telemedicine. A Teladoc spokesman stated the corporate believed at this level that “it’s maximum suitable” for the antiviral capsules to be prescribed in individual.)

I began calling pressing care clinics and well being techniques close to my mom to look if they might write her a prescription. At one level, we even were given her on a video name with a physician at a close-by well being device.

Maddeningly, we had been many times instructed the similar factor: Their docs couldn’t write prescriptions for Paxlovid all the way through digital appointments. My mom would need to be evaluated in individual — apparently defeating the aim of a far flung physician’s appointment.

In the end, this used to be a nonstarter, as a result of my mom lives by myself and doesn’t pressure, and the clinics weren’t inside strolling distance. She would no longer imagine taking a taxi or a bus and threat exposing others to the virus. On this regard, my mom isn’t by myself. Tens of tens of millions of American citizens depend on public transportation. And the ones with automobiles threat spreading the virus whilst searching for prescriptions in individual.

Different scientific amenities I referred to as that afternoon supplied me with data that used to be simply simple fallacious. One individual instructed me that no monoclonal antibody remedies had been to be had in California. Any other insisted that Paxlovid used to be just for hospitalized sufferers.

After all, my scramble to discover a prescriber grew to become out to be pointless. Within the early night time, my mom were given an sudden name from a physician along with her number one care supplier. She instructed the physician about her signs and in regards to the Ceremony Assist I had discovered with Paxlovid in inventory.

The physician instructed her that he used to be stunned that we were ready to trace down Paxlovid. He phoned in a prescription to the Ceremony Assist.

Now we simply wanted to pick out up the capsules prior to the drugstore closed in about an hour.

Uber got here to the rescue. I asked a pickup on the Ceremony Assist and indexed the vacation spot as my mom’s domestic, some 60 miles away.

As soon as a driving force authorized the journey, I referred to as him and defined my atypical request: He’d want to get the prescription on the pharmacy window after which pressure it to my mom’s. I instructed him I’d give him a 100% tip.

The motive force, who requested me to not use his identify on this article, used to be sport. He delivered the valuable shipment simply after 8 p.m. My mom swallowed the primary 3 capsules — the start of a five-day, 30-pill routine — inside mins of the driving force’s arrival.

“Taking meds & very grateful to have them,” she texted within the circle of relatives workforce chat.

Through some measures, my seek used to be a hit. My mom began taking the capsules most effective two and a part days after her signs started and inside 8 hours of checking out certain.

Inside a couple of days, she began feeling higher. She completed the routine this previous weekend.

However the truth that the method used to be so onerous for a journalist whose task it’s to know the way Paxlovid will get delivered isn’t encouraging. I concern that many sufferers or their circle of relatives would surrender when instructed “no” as again and again as I used to be.

I used to be additionally reminded that even a “loose” remedy can include vital prices.

The government has purchased sufficient Paxlovid for 20 million American citizens, at a value of about $530 consistent with individual, to be disbursed without spending a dime. However I spent $256.54 getting the capsules for my mom. I paid $39 for the telemedicine consult with with the supplier who instructed my mom that she would want to consult with in individual. The remainder used to be the Uber fare and tip. Many sufferers and their households can’t manage to pay for that.

President Biden just lately referred to as the Pfizer capsules a “sport changer.” My enjoy suggests it gained’t be relatively so easy.