This is an excerpt from a recent edition of The Journal’s Coronavirus Newsletter. This newsletter cuts out noise and false information to provide clear and accessible facts about the coronavirus, the Irish battle to contain it, and further development.
This is your one stop shop For Covid News at times when it can be difficult or overwhelming to get the latest information.
You can read the full version here, Sign up to receive our newsletter here Or at the bottom of the page. This version contains additional updates.
In the early days of the pandemic, the Holy Grail in the fight against Covid was always regarded as a safe and effective vaccine.
We got it in late 2020, but the heterogeneous crew of variants we faced needed us a simple primary course of vaccination, as well as weakened immunity. Rewarded the idea of ​​being everything.
Boosters help the majority of the population, and in addition, a healthy lifestyle never fails.
However, the fact remains that vaccines are not 100% effective in preventing serious illnesses and that some people, especially those with immunodeficiency, may not develop a strong immune response in the first place.
New treatment
Enter the need for other front-line treatments that can be used to effectively prevent people at risk from becoming seriously ill.
You may have heard DexamethasoneA commonly available steroid that has been found to be effective in treating Covid, but is already effective only in critically ill patients.
Remdesivir It has proven to have some usefulness. It is used in Irish hospitals, but it takes longer to administer because it requires 3 courses of intravenous treatment (usually given to inpatients for logistics).
Arthritis drug Baricitinib Shows some promises.
Others, mainly Hydroxychloroquine When IvermectinDespite some early hype and lasting bad publicity, they continue to be good remedies for other illnesses, but have proven ineffective.
Newly developed treatments are now available and three treatments are freely available in Ireland.
Monoclonal antibody
One is Sotrovimab (Also known as Xevudy), a monoclonal antibody therapy developed by GSK can reduce the likelihood of adults at high risk of serious illness from hospitalization of Covid by as much as 79%.
Monoclonal antibody therapy is basically an infusion of antibodies produced by the body in response to vaccines and infections, targeting the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that we are accustomed to.
File photo of the administered monoclonal antibody therapy.
Source: Alamy
You may remember that former US President Donald Trump was given this when he captured Covid...
It should be administered in the early stages of infection.
There are some concerns that sotrovimab is less effective against OmicronHowever, it now seems to retain the ability to fend off the worst effects of the virus (Other antibody therapies, such as those developed by Regeneron and Eli Lilly, have stopped working).
In addition to sotrovimab, there are also two antiviral drugs with similarly non-catchy names.
One is MSD Lagevrio (Also known as Molnupiravir) And the other is Pfizer’s Paxlovid (A combination of two drugs, ritonavir and PF-07321332, also known as nirmatorelvir):
- Lagevrio is ingested for 5 days and works by blocking the ability of the coronavirus to replicate in the body.
- Paxlovid is the same, but PF-07321332 is responsible for stopping viral replication while ritonavir prolongs its action.
Lageviro halves the risk of hospitalization for adults with at least one risk factor (for example, old age or heart disease), while Paxlovid is even more effective, reducing the risk of hospitalization by up to 90%.
Importantly, studies investigating both treatments recorded some deaths in the placebo group, but not in the pill-treated group.
Both medicines are safe. A complication of Paxlovid is that it may interact with other medicines.
Ireland has invested € 90 million in these three treatments (both antiviral and antibody treatments), but it is not clear how they will be rolled out.
Referral route
Although relevant healthcare professionals have been instructed when to administer sotrovimab in Ireland, it is understood that the patient referral route (access to treatment) has not yet been clearly defined.
They are popping up Ad hoc base In some cases.
Basically, most people who are eligible for sotrovimab belong to a very high-risk category and may have regular contact with care professionals.
Once they are confirmed to have Covid (anecdotally via PCR only), their care team can refer them for antibody treatment, but they are still aggressive. May need to be.
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HSE said in a statement: journal The provision is “for high-priority patients who need to be referred to a hospital by the GP for provisional use of sotrovimab while waiting for the establishment of a permanent community pathway.” I was.
In this newsletter, Dr. Bryan Kent, a respiratory specialist at St. James Infirmary’s Hospital in Dublin, it’s important to act swiftly if you suspect a high-risk condition or a person with weak immunity is infected with Covid. He emphasized the window of opportunity. Treatment is narrow:
What is important for people to understand is for them to get their opinion if they belong to a vulnerable group or if they are concerned that they may belong to a vulnerable group. If you test positive that you need to contact their management team regarding whether they need this [antibody] process.
He said vaccination helped mitigate the Covid threat to risk groups such as high blood pressure, the elderly, and diabetic patients, but in treatments that suppress people with weakened or immune systems. He explained that the risk remained.
Dr. Kent said:
Having access to Sotrovimab was great. That means we were able to successfully intervene early on for those who were very worried about facing very serious difficulties.
File photo of Paxlovid’s box.
Source: Alamy
And tablets? Well, about them.
HSE said Paxolvid’s delivery is scheduled for the end of this month, after which plans to manage it will be publicly announced.
Discussions with the makers of Lagevrio are still ongoing.
Dr. Kent said these are more accessible than antibody treatments and are likely to be available to a wider group of people, but are undefined at this time.
This is because it is easier and more widely available than antibody therapy (sotrovimab is used in all hospitals, but only an estimated 2,000 doses are available annually, with 207 doses to date. ). the-counter (especially given the potential complications of Paxlovid).
In England Paxlovid is available by prescriptionHowever, it is not yet known if such accessibility will occur in Ireland.
This is an excerpt from a recent edition of The Journal’s Coronavirus Newsletter. This newsletter cuts out noise and false information to provide clear and accessible facts about the coronavirus, the Irish battle to contain it, and further development.
This is your one stop shop For Covid News at times when it can be difficult or overwhelming to get the latest information.
You can read the full version here, Sign up to receive our newsletter here Or at the bottom of the page. This version contains additional updates.
