One in five patients experience rebound COVID after taking Paxlovid, new study finds

While Paxlovid remains a ‘life-saving drug,’ Mass General Brigham researchers found that patients experiencing virologic rebound after treatment may remain contagious A new study by investigators from Mass General Brigham found that one in five individuals taking Nirmatrelvir-ritonavir therapy, commonly known as Paxlovid, to treat severe symptoms of COVID-19, experienced a positive test result and shedding of live and potentially contagious virus following an initial recovery and negative test—a phenomenon known as virologic rebound. By contrast, people not taking Paxlovid only experienced rebound about 2 percent of the time. Results are published in Annals of Internal Medicine. “We conducted this study to address lingering questions about Paxlovid and virologic rebound in COVID-19 treatment,” said corresponding author Mark Siedner, M.D., MPH, an infectious disease clinician and researcher in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital. “We found that the virologic rebound phenomenon was much more common than expected—in over 20% of...