The US stops using two covid-19 treatments for not working against omicron

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdrew two monoclonal antibody therapies from the list of approved treatments against covid-19 in the country on Monday, assuring that they are not effective against the omicron variant.

The FDA reported in a statement that it has withdrawn its authorization for the use of the therapies bamlanivimab and etesevimab -which are administered together, from the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly- and REGEN-COV, made up of casirivimab and imdevimab, from Regeneron.

"The data shows that these treatments are highly unlikely to activate against the omicron variant, which is circulating at a very high frequency in the United States."Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in the note.

Therefore, from now on, those medicines "are no longer authorized for use in any US state, territory, or jurisdiction."he continued.

"In the future, if patients in certain geographic regions are likely to be infected or exposed to a variant that is susceptible to these treatments, then these treatments may be licensed for use in those regions"Cavazzoni added.

The omicron variant accounts for more than 99% of covid-19 cases in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Remove for now the authorization of these therapies "avoids exposing patients to side effects, such as injection site reactions or potentially serious allergic reactions, from treatments that are not expected to be of benefit" for patients infected with ómicron, explained the doctor.

The FDA recalled that there are several therapies authorized in the United States that are expected to work against the omicron variant in patients who are at risk of developing severe disease, citing Paxlovid, sotrovimab, Veklury (remdesivir) and molnupiravir among them. .

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The agency followed the recommendation of a committee of the National Institutes of Health (NIH, in English), which last week advised against the use of therapies from Eli Lilly and Regeneron, considering that they had a "noticeably reduced" against omicron.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, last week ignored those NIH findings and said he wanted to continue administering such treatments in his state, something he won’t be able to do now.

In a statement, DeSantis condemned the FDA’s decision and said it has caused more than 2,000 appointments to receive this treatment to be canceled on Tuesday the 25th alone.

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