We begin tonight with what could be good news. Today, the White House took steps to make a pill treating Covid available to millions more Americans. Pfizer’s antivirus drug Paxlovid has been shown to reduce hospitalization or death in people with Covid by nearly ninety percent. The drug that was one step to the biggest game changers since the vaccine hasn’t have the true impact due to lack of availability. The free antivirus drug is available in about twenty thousand sites around the country. But now there is hope it could change. Pfizer just asked the FDA to authorize its booster for kids ages five to eleven. That’s important because the CDC says seventy five percent of that age group has had Covid at least once. And here in nation’s capital we learned that Vice President K.H tested positive with Covid 19. The White House says President B is not considered a close contact.

The Vice President tested positive this morning after starting her day at the west wing. We should know she is vaccinated and boosted. But that comes with the White House already having Covid at the top of their agenda. They roll out of a new plan, to make that powerful anti-Covid drug widely available on pharmacy shelves nationwide. Paxlovid, one of the most effective antivirus tools for treating Covid but only more people could get their hands on it. Until recently it was hard to find, but with production up, the B administration announced today it wants to make Paxlovid available for free and it’s launching the effort to double the supply, getting the pills to twenty thousand more pharmacies over the coming weeks. It reduces the hospitalization and death by eighty nine percent in high-risk adult patients. And it’s already authorized for people twelve and older or considered at high-risk often with underline conditions obesity, hypertension, diabetes and asthma. But it must be taken within five days of symptoms. Often ??? a race to find a pharmacy that actually has stock. Another key tool to ??? return normalcy with antivirus drug R. which the FDA just proved to treat children as young as twenty-eight days old with Covid. At a time when more than half of Americans including three out of four children have now survived case of Covid. Nationwide, Covid cases are up twenty-two percent over the last week and forty-five percent over the last two weeks. Still, Covid deaths down over that same period, falling thirteen percent over the last week and thirty-seven percent from last two weeks. Also tonight, Pfizer has requested that emergency use authorization for its booster shot in children ages five to eleven years old. Based on data they submitted to the FDA, a third dose of vaccine show significant protection against the virus in that five to eleven age group.