Following up on yesterdays post on this subject

let’s give it a shot

Doctors increasingly turning to treating COVID patients early, before they’re hospitalized

Antibody drugs from Regeneron, Eli Lilly and others remained largely unused for months, but have now been adopted to fight the latest surge of COVID-19brought on by the Indian 'Delta' variant in an effort to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed.    

Regeneron Pharmaceutical Inc, predicts that as early as June, less than five percent of high-risk patients were receiving treatment, chief executive Leonard Schlieffer told The Wall Street Journal in an interview. However, in the last few weeks, that number has increased to 30 percent. …

Doctors are increasingly turning to antibody drugs in a bid to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed by a surge of COVID-19 patients. ….

The adoption of these drugs is also increasing due to greater public awareness and a looser grip on who can qualify for them under the FDA's emergency-use authorizations. 

Monoclonal antibodies are molecules produced in a lab that imitate the immune system's antibodies that fight viruses and bacteria like the new Delta variant. 

For the sickest patients, there aren't many alternatives as effective as Regeneron's drug, Vicki Brownewell, chief nursing officer at Houston Methodist West Hospital in Texas, told The Journal.

Antibody drugs, if quickly provided after infection, are a way to lower the number of hospitalizations for COVID-19, she said. 

'Once a patient is hospitalized with Covid there's very little we can do except support them. There are no magic-bullet drugs that work,' Brownewell told the newspaper.

The FDA authorized the first antibody drugs from Regeneron and Eli Lilly & Co.= in November 2020 for people whose health were likely to develop severe cases. 

Former President Donald Trump credited Regeneron for coming up with the first drug last October, but most doctors were slow to use the treatments until now.

Some hospitals struggled with the supply of the drugs as it required patients to go to get infusions or a series of shots before being closely watched for an hour for possible allergic reactions. 

Others have been hesitant at reassigning their strained employees from treating ill-health patients to providing drugs to patients with mild cases. 

Regeneron's Dr Schleifer said the drugs weren't being given out due to a lack of support from public-health leaders, such as the National Institutes of Health, which didn't recommend them until early this year. 

'Without the voice of the NIH endorsing these in a major way, the word just didn't get out there,' he said. …

A Eli Lilly spokeswoman said the interruption is still in effect and that the company is developing a new antibody drug designed to fight most variants of the coronavirus. 

Other pharmaceuticals, such as Vir Biotechnology Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline PLC, have released antibody drugs in May, which have been approved by the FDA. 

However, the federal government has yet to purchase them.