Covid-19 treatments: plentiful but sitting on shelves

Covid-19 treatments: plentiful but sitting on shelves

 

There are very few drugs that prevent people with early Covid-19 from progressing to severe disease, but monoclonal antibodies may be among them.   Recent results from Eli Lilly and Company found that nursing home residents who received the company's antibody treatment had up to an 80% lower risk of contracting symptomatic Covid-19 versus residents in the same facility who received a placebo. And on Tuesday, Regeneron released interim results from an ongoing trial that found its treatment prevented disease among people at high risk for infection. The study looked at 400 people exposed to the coronavirus in their households. The half of that group that received the drug only developed asymptomatic Covid-19, with infections lasting no more than one week. Forty percent of the placebo group had infections that lasted three to four weeks, and 62% of them had high viral loads.   But health officials say too few patients are getting them – that they or their doctors don’t know about them. Another challenge is that they are more complicated than just taking a pill. The two FDA-authorized antibody treatments for Covid-19 need to be administered by IV, and require both the space and the staff to administer them.   According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, nearly 800,000 courses of the treatment have been allocated, but just a little over half of those courses have actually been used. "We need you to ask your provider about monoclonal antibodies as a way of keeping you out of the hospital,” said outgoing Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams. “I want to remind everyone that we're not helpless in our crusade against the virus."