Eli Lilly’s experimental COVID-19 antibody gets permission from the United States drug regulator to be used during emergency as a treatment for non-hospitalised patients with mild-to-moderate symptoms.
Whenever there has been a high risk of the disease worsening, bamlanivimab, reduced the need for hospitalisation or emergency room visits in COVID-19 patients and this was authorized based on clinical trials.
According to the FDA, this drug can be used for treating mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in patients above the age of 12 and even patients above 65 or with certain chronic medical conditions can also be prescribed the drug.
This antibody treatment won’t be of use to patients hospitalised due to COVID-19 or require oxygen therapy due to COVID-19. In fact, this drug could worsen the clinical status for patients who are seriously affected.
According to a US government-sponsored study, this was recently abandoned because the treatment was not shown to be helping.
On Monday, US medicine manufacturer, Pfizer said its experimental COVID-19 vaccine is more than 90-percent effective.
This sparked a hope for the share markets that the vaccine would help speed up the recovery of this depressing global economic downturn.
Eli Lilly requested emergency use authorisation for its single-antibody therapy.
A study was conducted on 452 patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 and after conducting a peer-to peer review they found that 1.6 percent of those who received the antibody infusion had to be hospitalised or required an emergency room visit, compared with 6.3 percent of those who received a placebo.
In November, the company had plans of authorizing the two-antibody cocktail, which it said could help in reducing viral levels even more than a single-antibody treatment.
The treatment includes monoclonal antibodies – these are a widely used class of biotech drugs that are synthetically replicate antibodies created by the human body to fight infections.
One million doses of the single-antibody therapy is expected to be supplied in the fourth quarter, with 100,000 doses available in October.
With the US Government, it agreed to a $1,250-per-dose deal and plans to sell the treatment to other countries.
Lilly said in a statement that bamlanivimab should be administered “as soon as possible after a positive Covid-19 test and within 10 days of symptom onset.”
AmerisourceBergen Corp is soon to receive the antibody therapy from lilly and as per instructions of the US Government, it would accordingly be distributed.
The companny said that it would be sold at an affordable price while acknowledging that healthcare facilities may charge a fee for the product’s intravenous administration.
Like Lilly, there are several others testing antibody treatments for COVID-19. One such antibody is Regeneron’s. This was given to Trump in October and it likely contributed to his recovery, according to top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci.
