Though supplies of new COVID-19 antiviral drugs remain tight, Colorado officials made it easier Monday for high-risk Coloradans to obtain them.

Under a newly amended public health order, Coloradans with one of several risk conditions can now get antiviral medications from an authorized provider without a referral. The drugs still require a prescription. 

It’s a similar step to one taken by state leaders in November: Gov. Jared Polis announced that anyone eligible to receive monoclonal antibodies can do so without a prior referral, clearing the way for those residents to more quickly obtain the treatment. 

Risk factors to qualify for the new antivirals include, among others, being over the age of 64; being overweight, diabetic or pregnant; or having chronic kidney, lung or heart disease, or a weakened immune system, either because of an illness or a treatment. 

The order also allows for flexibility for other risk factors, including non-medical ones like race or ethnicity, “that may also place individual patients at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19.” People of color have broadly been shown to have died at higher rates from COVID-19 than white Americans.

Access to the antivirals is “really constrained,” said Scott Bookman, Colorado’s COVID-19 incident commander. Speaking to reporters last week, Bookman said the state had recently received about 900 doses of  Paxlovid, the new Pfizer-created antiviral.

He said it was “up to providers to make sure they’re talking to patients who are high risk to make sure they get” the drugs.

Bookman and other health officials here have said the arrival of antivirals, taken together with vaccines and higher population-level immunity, is a key piece in Colorado finding a way to manage COVID-19 going forward.