Anti-Covid-19 antibody treatments are numerous, but still pending

“This prevents hospitalizations, but the logistics of it have been daunting and of course the nursing staffing in our current national health crisis also has its own struggle,” McAuley said.

The Piedmont program now treats around 250 Covid-19 patients per week, but across the country, health officials have said treatments were not used enough in the months they were available.

In Michigan, for example, less than 10% of available Covid-19 monoclonal antibody treatments have been used, said Dr. William Fales, medical director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, at a point release last week.
California health officials told CNN that facilities in their state administered 8% of the stock of available monoclonal antibodies during the week of January 13.

But while the Biden administration rolls out its own national strategy to control the pandemic, it is unclear exactly how many of the antibody treatments distributed have actually treated patients, or where. This information is not published on the HHS website or tracked on state dashboards.

HHS told CNN in early January that the average use of antibody therapy was 25%. Eli Lilly said on Wednesday that the use of the two authorized antibody therapies in the United States had increased to 39%, according to information that Operation Warp Speed ​​shared with the company last week.

“The drugs, these therapies aren’t used as much as I am, or the doctors on the task force, or the experts, the career experts here at HHS believe they should be. I want to remind everyone that we are not helpless. in our crusade against the virus. “

Aggressive public awareness ongoing

An Eli Lilly spokesperson, Molly McCully, said in an email that the company is seeing “steady improvement in usage from week to week.” She added that the company was working in partnership with the government to raise awareness of the treatments.

Alexandra Bowie, a spokesperson for Regeneron, said the company acknowledges that “there were challenges with the last 10 meters in terms of easily delivering the antibody to patients.”

“Our team has worked very hard to develop and test this drug in record time, and obviously we want it to reach as many patients as possible, as quickly as possible,” Bowie said in an email.

“Since the deployment of the antibodies coincided with a surge of the virus in most states, this has naturally been difficult for providers / health centers who are already at their peak,” Bowie said. “But we are on appeal daily with government leaders who are responding to patient / physician feedback and working to ensure more Americans have access to these drugs.”

Regeneron said it is also trying to educate providers and raise awareness through social media.

Education seems to be working. North Dakota, for example, said it was also trying to help get the word out to clinicians and the public. This is also something that contract tracers mention when contacting people to let them know they have been exposed to someone with Covid-19.

“Initially, there was a lot of skepticism about these drugs,” said Dr. Joshua Ranum, vice president of the North Dakota Medical Association. “Now there has been very aggressive public awareness here. I have seen a lot more patient awareness and acceptance and we have seen some pretty dramatic results with effectiveness.

Although the use of monoclonal antibody treatments has been “low,” it has steadily grown, according to Heather Steffl, North Dakota’s public information officer. She said the use of the treatments went from 450 infusions in the first six weeks to an average of 650 per week.

And it helped. Steffl said the state had seen “success” with the treatments and a decrease in the number of hospitalizations.

‘Now there is something they can actually do to help’

One health care system that has embraced the treatments is South Dakota-based Sanford Health, which operates 46 hospitals and 200 senior care centers in 26 states.

Sanford said it has treated more than 1,400 patients to date with the Lilly and Regeneron antibody treatments.

“Don’t get me wrong, there was a bit of construction going on to do that,” said Dr Jermey Cauwels, Chief Medical Officer of Sanford. “But honestly, when we saw that this was something that was going to help us get through the worst of the crisis, we said, ‘Let’s see how quickly we can put this in place. “”

Sanford’s electronic registration system has been one of the keys to the success of the program, Cauwels said. It is now configured to automatically report when someone tests positive for Covid-19. The system notifies a group who quickly determines if the patient is eligible for treatment and if so, Sanford calls to get them into the clinic as soon as possible.

Cauwels said the treatments had already prevented at least 40 hospitalizations, several deaths “and more than a year of hospital days.”

“It’s just to do this for a few months,” Cauwels said.

Nurse Dena Ollis, the director of women’s services who helped set up the program at Piedmont Athens Regional in Georgia, said the monoclonal antibody treatments provided something that staff and patients did not. seen a lot during the pandemic – hope.

“We had a lot of angst about putting all of this in place, but once we got it up and running it was very gratifying to see patients so grateful,” said Ollis. “And the staff are very hopeful that there is now something they can actually do to help the patient and hopefully prevent the disease process from getting worse.