The federal Test-to-Treat programme to quickly get antiviral medications to a person who tests positive for Covid-19 is failing the majority of the country, due to the way it is structured. Kaiser Health News reports on the myriad of problems, but the TL;DR is here.
You must have a physician's, nurse practitioner's, or physician's assistant's prescription to receive the medication, and the programme requires all of this to be under one roof. No rural pharmacies have that.
Over 70% of all providers are CVS. Not all states have CVS, or one is a long way away. Another significant portion are the military or Indian Health Service, which are not open to the public.
CVS directs you to obtain an appointment on their Website, which does not work correctly. They also upsell you to a telehealth appointment when that doesn't work with one of the above professionals first, which costs more money than a lot of people can bear. (The programme is supposed to be free, but doctor's appointments aren't.)
Notably, pharmacists are not allowed to write those prescriptions, which would allow rural pharmacies if they could to participate in the programme. Pharmacy organisations have been stonewalled by the federal government in permitting pharmacists from writing those prescriptions.
Entire states are left with no federal Test-to-Treat programme, such as Wyoming. In my own area, there is only one provider sixty miles away (a hospital), which requires a prescription from a doctor first (by federal law), which only gives appointments a few days a month (don't get sick on the other days). The next nearest provider to me is four hundred miles away (you cannot go to another state under the programme). In Montana, the nearest provider is one hundred miles away from the largest city (Billings).
Kaiser offers some solutions to unfuque the programme which is denying seniors, people without Internet, people with very slow Internet (raises hand), disabled, or people who can't take four or five hours off work. The government is not listening. Profit for capitalists must be maintained.