By ZEKE MILLER | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — The White House on Thurs­day an­nounced more steps to make the an­tivi­ral treat­ment Paxlovid more ac­ces­si­ble across the U.S. as it projects COVID-19 in­fec­tions will con­tin­ue to spread over the sum­mer trav­el sea­son.

The na­tion’s first fed­er­al­ly backed test-to-treat site is open­ing Thurs­day in Rhode Is­land, pro­vid­ing pa­tients with im­me­di­ate ac­cess to the drug once they test pos­i­tive. More fed­er­al­ly sup­port­ed sites are set to open in the com­ing weeks in Mass­a­chu­setts and New York City, both hit by a marked rise in in­fec­tions.

Next week, the U.S. will send au­tho­rized fed­er­al pre­scribers to sev­er­al Min­neso­ta-run test­ing sites, turn­ing them in­to test-to-treat lo­ca­tions. Fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors have al­so sent clear­er guid­ance to physi­cians to help them de­ter­mine how to man­age Paxlovid’s in­ter­ac­tions with oth­er drugs, with an eye to­ward help­ing pre­scribers find ways to get the life-sav­ing med­ica­tion to more pa­tients.

De­spite a na­tion­wide surge in COVID-19 cas­es, deaths from the virus have re­mained large­ly sta­ble over the past eight weeks, as vac­cine boost­er shots and wide­ly ac­ces­si­ble treat­ments have helped to delink in­fec­tions and mor­tal­i­ty.

Con­firmed in­fec­tions in the U.S. have quadru­pled since late March, from about 25,000 a day to more than 105,000 dai­ly now. But deaths, which have tend­ed to lag in­fec­tions by three to four weeks over the course of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, have de­clined steadi­ly and are now plateaued at few­er than 300 per day.

It’s the first time in the course of the pan­dem­ic that the two have not trend­ed to­geth­er, said White House COVID-19 co­or­di­na­tor Dr. Ashish Jha. He called it an im­por­tant de­vel­op­ment in help­ing Amer­i­cans get back to nor­mal life.

“What has been re­mark­able in the lat­est in­crease in in­fec­tions we’re see­ing is how steady se­ri­ous ill­ness and par­tic­u­lar­ly deaths are eight weeks in­to this,” he said. “COVID is no longer the killer that it was even a year ago.”

Jha said that giv­en the wider use of at-home rapid tests, whose re­sults of­ten go un­re­port­ed to pub­lic health of­fi­cials, the true num­ber of dai­ly in­fec­tions is like­ly 200,000 or more — dou­ble the re­port­ed rate — which he said on­ly makes the death rate plateau more sig­nif­i­cant.

He cred­it­ed vac­cines but al­so a more than four-fold in­crease in pre­scrip­tions over the last six weeks for the high­ly ef­fec­tive treat­ment Paxlovid.

Jha said about 25,000 to 30,000 cours­es of Paxlovid are be­ing pre­scribed each day. When ad­min­is­tered with­in five days of symp­toms ap­pear­ing, the drug has been proven to bring about a 90% re­duc­tion in hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and deaths among pa­tients most like­ly to get se­vere dis­ease.

Due to a change in the way Paxlovid is al­lo­cat­ed to states, the num­ber of phar­ma­cies where it is avail­able has dou­bled in the last month to al­most 40,000.

“We are now at a point where I be­lieve fun­da­men­tal­ly most COVID deaths are pre­ventable, that the deaths that are hap­pen­ing out there are most­ly un­nec­es­sary, and there are a lot of tools we have now to make sure peo­ple do not die of this dis­ease,” Jha told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Wednes­day.

As the sum­mer months ap­proach, Jha said the “num­ber one” thing peo­ple need to do is to “go and get boost­ed” — and if they have a break­through in­fec­tion, they should con­sult with their doc­tor about get­ting Paxlovid. He said gath­er­ings of all sizes can take place more safe­ly be­cause of the tools avail­able — if peo­ple make use of them.

“In places in the coun­try where boost­ing rates are much low­er, where the in­fec­tion is start­ing to spread more, I am ab­solute­ly con­cerned that we’re go­ing to see, un­for­tu­nate­ly, we may see more se­ri­ous ill­ness,” he said.

“Be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed and boost­ed is a huge part of mak­ing sure that those kinds of ac­tiv­i­ties are sub­stan­tial­ly safer,” he added. “And then, of course, we want to make Paxlovid as wide­ly avail­able across the en­tire coun­try, so that if you do end up get­ting a break­through in­fec­tion, you’re still pro­tect­ed against se­ri­ous ill­ness.”

The U.S. has or­dered 20 mil­lion cours­es of Paxlovid from the drug­mak­er Pfiz­er, and the coun­try risks run­ning out this win­ter if the drug con­tin­ues to be used wide­ly. The White House has been press­ing Con­gress for ad­di­tion­al funds for months to sup­port pur­chas­ing more Paxlovid and oth­er treat­ments, as well as ad­di­tion­al boost­ers.

While the ad­min­is­tra­tion has start­ed plan­ning for the po­ten­tial need to ra­tion the fed­er­al sup­ply of vac­cines if Con­gress doesn’t act, Jha said right now his mes­sage to pre­scribers is that they shouldn’t wor­ry about the sup­ply.

“I be­lieve that we should be us­ing as much as it’s nec­es­sary to pro­tect Amer­i­cans now,” Jha said.