Gimhae City Designates 19 Pharmacies for COVID-19 Oral Antiviral Treatment

Abolishment of Designation Criteria, Addition of Regular Pharmacies

Gyeongnam Gimhae Western Public Health Center is expanding the designation of pharmacies responsible for oral COVID-19 treatments.

The Western Public Health Center announced on the 14th that it will abolish the designation criteria for responsible pharmacies to improve accessibility to oral COVID-19 treatments.

The number of pharmacies, which was previously 9, will be increased to 19, and additional expansions will be made on an ongoing basis if there are pharmacies applying.

According to the health center, the locations of responsible pharmacies can be found by entering ‘COVID treatment pharmacy’ in the Kakao Map or Naver Map search bar to check pharmacies near your location.

Oral COVID-19 treatments Lagevrio (Molnupiravir) and Paxlovid (below).
[Photo by Gimhae-si, Gyeongnam]

Oral treatments such as Paxlovid and Lagevrio (Molnupiravir) can only be prescribed to confirmed patients who meet the administration criteria.

Prescriptions are possible after consultation and examination by medical staff at hospitals or clinics.

The target patients are those aged 60 or older, patients with underlying diseases, immunocompromised individuals, etc., and the medication should be taken within 5 days of the onset of COVID-19 symptoms as a principle.

Kang Seon-hee, director of the Western Public Health Center, said, “As the adjustment of indoor mask mandates to level 1 and other steps toward daily life recovery accelerate, we will do our best to manage infectious diseases by improving accessibility to oral COVID-19 treatments to ensure early medication for high-risk groups without disruption.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.