Antiviral drugs like nirmatrelvir with ritonavir (Paxlovid) and remdesivir (Veklury) can greatly reduce the risks of hospitalization and death for people at risk of severe COVID-19 infections.

But patient use of the treatments is low and uneven.

A new paper published in the journal JAMA Network Open suggests public health websites are partly to blame — including Arizona’s.

The research letter rates public health websites of 50 states, five territories and Washington, D.C., and assesses factors like readability; navigation; facts about options, eligibility, locations and costs; and access for people with disabilities.

Out of 100, readability scores ranged from around 12-93 and averaged in the mid-40s.

Arizona fell below that and also posted the lowest mean accessibility score: .25 on a scale of 0-2.

Across the U.S., accessibility ratings fell lowest for deaf access, payment information and telephone support, including mention of Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf.

Like most sites studied, the Arizona’s public health COVID-19 antiviral treatment website was rated as difficult to read. Estimates based on Flesch reading ease scores, which are based on words per sentence and syllables per word, ranked it as requiring college-level aptitude.

Few websites posted text in non-English languages. The Arizona Department of Health Services website has some Spanish language pages, but says they are “translations from original text written in English” and “unofficial and not binding” on the state or its political subdivisions.

The authors call for national guidelines to address the problem.