Introduction by Croakey: Inequity has been at the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic from the start, including a mortality burden that has fallen most heavily on the most disadvantaged groups, including First Nations people, people of colour, people with disability, and those who are poorer.
Peter Breadon, Program Director of Health and Aged Care at the Grattan Institute, has previously mapped out COVID inequities, including that, in 2021, the risk of dying from COVID in Australia’s poorest neighbourhoods was six times higher than in the wealthiest.
As well, almost every group at higher risk was less likely to be vaccinated than the average Australian, including people who are Indigenous, poor, live in rural Australia, and were born overseas.
He concluded earlier this year: “At every step – vaccination, risk of infection, risk of severe illness, and access to treatment – the deck has been stacked against disadvantaged Australians. These gaps didn’t come out of nowhere. Instead, they reflect a health lottery that predates the pandemic.”
In the article below, originally published at The Conversation, Breadon writes that access to antivirals in Australia is also inequitable and recommends three steps the Federal Government could take to make access fairer.
His analysis comes amid news of the retirement of Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly, who has been in the role since 2020 and has also served as the Head of the interim Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC) since 1 January this year.
Health Minister Mark Butler paid tribute to Kelly’s work particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying his “constant presence, technical expertise, and clear communication provided reassurance to the public and critical advice to governments at a time of extreme uncertainty”.
Kelly will finish up in the roles on 21 October 2024, with arrangements for his replacement to be confirmed “in due course”, the Minister said in a statement.
Peter Breadon writes:
Medical experts recommend antivirals for people aged 70 and older who get COVID, and for other groups at risk of severe illness and hospitalisation from COVID.
But many older Australians have missed out on antivirals after getting sick with COVID. It is yet another way the health system is failing the most vulnerable.
We analysed COVID antiviral uptake between March 2022 and September 2023. We found some groups were more likely to miss out on antivirals including Indigenous people, people from disadvantaged areas, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
Some of the differences will be due to different rates of infection. But across this 18-month period, many older Australians were infected at least once, and rates of infection were higher in some disadvantaged communities.
Stark differences
Compared to the national average, Indigenous Australians were nearly 25 percent less likely to get antivirals, older people living in disadvantaged areas were 20 percent less likely to get them, and people with a culturally or linguistically diverse background were 13 percent less likely to get a script.
People in remote areas were 37 percent less likely to get antivirals than people living in major cities. People in outer regional areas were 25 percent less likely.
Even within the same city, the differences are stark. In Sydney, people older than 70 in the affluent eastern suburbs (including Vaucluse, Point Piper and Bondi) were nearly twice as likely to have had an antiviral as those in Fairfield, in Sydney’s south-west.
Older people in leafy inner-eastern Melbourne (including Canterbury, Hawthorn and Kew) were 1.8 times more likely to have had an antiviral as those in Brimbank (which includes Sunshine) in the city’s west.
Why people miss out
COVID antivirals should be taken when symptoms first appear. While awareness of COVID antivirals is generally strong, people often don’t realise they would benefit from the medication. They wait until symptoms get worse and it is too late.
Frequent GP visits make a big difference. Our analysis found people 70 and older who see a GP more frequently were much more likely to be dispensed a COVID antiviral.
Regular visits give an opportunity for preventive care and patient education. For example, GPs can provide high-risk patients with “COVID treatment plans” as a reminder to get tested and seek treatment as soon as they are unwell.
Difficulty seeing a GP could help explain low antiviral use in rural areas. Compared to people in major cities, people in small rural towns have about 35 percent fewer GPs, see their GP about half as often, and are 30 percent more likely to report waiting too long for an appointment.
Just like for vaccination, a GP’s focus on antivirals probably matters, as does providing care that is accessible to people from different cultural backgrounds.
Equity matters
Since the period we looked at, evidence has emerged that raises doubts about how effective antivirals are, particularly for people at lower risk of severe illness. That means getting vaccinated is more important than getting antivirals.
But all Australians who are eligible for antivirals should have the same chance of getting them.
These drugs have cost more than A$1.7 billion, with the vast majority of that money coming from the Federal Government. While dispensing rates have fallen, more than 30,000 packs of COVID antivirals were dispensed in August, costing about $35 million.
Such a huge investment shouldn’t be leaving so many people behind. Getting treatment shouldn’t depend on your income, cultural background or where you live. Instead, care should go to those who need it the most.
People born overseas have been 40 percent more likely to die from COVID than those born here. Indigenous Australians have been 60 percent more likely to die from COVID than non-Indigenous people. And the most disadvantaged people have been 2.8 times more likely to die from COVID than those in the wealthiest areas.
All those at-risk groups have been more likely to miss out on antivirals.
It’s not just a problem with antivirals. The same groups are also disproportionately missing out on COVID vaccination, compounding their risk of severe illness. The pattern is repeated for other important preventive health care, such as cancer screening.
Three critical steps
The Federal Government should do three things to close these gaps in preventive care.
First, the Government should make Primary Health Networks (PHNs) responsible for reducing them. PHNs, the regional bodies responsible for improving primary care, should share data with GPs and step in to boost uptake in communities that are missing out.
Second, the government should extend its MyMedicare reforms.
MyMedicare gives general practices flexible funding to care for patients who live in residential aged care or who visit hospital frequently. That approach should be expanded to all patients, with more funding for poorer and sicker patients. That will give GP clinics time to advise patients about preventive health, including COVID vaccines and antivirals, before they get sick.
Third, team-based pharmacist prescribing should be introduced.
Then pharmacists could quickly dispense antivirals for patients if they have a prior agreement with the patient’s GP. It’s an approach that would also work for medications for chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease.
COVID antivirals, unlike vaccines, have been keeping up with new variants without the need for updates. If a new and more harmful variant emerges, or when a new pandemic hits, governments should have these systems in place to make sure everyone who needs treatment can get it fast.
In the meantime, fairer access to care will help close the big and persistent gaps in health between different groups of Australians.
See Croakey’s extensive archive of articles on COVID-19.