A drug proven to protect vulnerable patients who are still at risk from Covid could also radically reduce their chances of dying if they become infected, a study has found.
Evushold, developed by AstraZeneca, was approved by UK regulators in March – but as The Mail on Sunday revealed the following month, the Ministry of Health and Welfare refused to cover the cost of £ 800 per dose.
However, in light of recent findings, experts have renewed calls for the drug to be used quickly by the NHS for the most vulnerable patients as Covid infections begin to rise again.
Approximately 500,000 Britons do not respond to Covid vaccines due to severely damaged immune systems – known as immunocompromised – and many are still protected. These are mainly patients with blood cancer, as well as transplant patients who rely on drugs to suppress their immune system to stop their bodies from rejecting donor organs. These same medicines make the Covid vaccine less effective.
Approximately 500,000 Britons are still at risk from Covid-19 because current vaccinations do not provide adequate protection. A new drug developed by AstraZeneca, Evushold, may boost their immune system, but the government is reluctant to pay the price of £ 800 per dose
Some patients are not adequately protected from existing Covid-19 vaccines. Some vulnerable people have received five vaccines at this stage
In an attempt to provide vulnerable Britons with some protection measures, they were offered additional injections, which means that many will have already received five doses of the Covid vaccine. But the protective antibodies provided by the blows – protective proteins created by the body’s immune system in response to a vaccine – are rapidly reduced in these patients.
The results of the Evushold trial, published earlier this year, showed that if taken once every six months, it reduces a person’s risk of contracting Covid by nearly 80 percent. And the latest data already shows that if administered within a week of Covid infection, Evushold can also reduce the risk of serious illness and death by 50 percent, even in patients who are considered the most vulnerable.
Experts say Evushold must now play a dual role in protecting the most vulnerable, as well as ensuring that hospitals remain free of Covid patients as they struggle to cut waiting lists for surgery.
Official figures last week revealed that Covid’s cases are rising again, and the number of patients in hospital with the virus has risen from 4,200 to 5,000 in the past seven days. Professor Penny Ward, a pharmaceutical expert at King’s College London, said: “It is important that the Department of Health and Welfare soon received Evusheld so we can protect the vulnerable when Covid returns this winter.”
From December 2021, Britons who are believed to be at high risk of becoming dangerously ill with Covid have been offered medicines in hospital to strengthen their defenses. But there are growing concerns that some of them are ineffective against the Omicron variant and its various subtypes.
A drug called sotrovimab may soon be withdrawn from the use of NHS due to fears that it is ineffective against the sub-variant of Omicron BA.2, which is now available in the UK. In April, the US Food and Drug Administration revoked its authorization for sotrovimab pending further investigations. The UK’s Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency says it is also reviewing treatment.
And in January, NHS executives decided to stop using another treatment, ronapreve, after studies showed it was no longer effective against Omicron. A spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Welfare said in April that government scientists were still evaluating the effectiveness of Evusheld against the Omicron option. No findings from these investigations have yet been reported.
Meanwhile, other research suggests that Evushold is indeed fighting Omicron, a laboratory study from the University of Oxford published in May found that it was still working against all of Covid’s latest variants.
“This is more than can be said for sotrovimab, which does not seem to be very effective against Omicron, but is still used regularly at the NHS,” said Professor Ward.
Evushold is a drug with monoclonal antibodies. It works by attaching to and inhibiting the ability of the Covid virus to bind to healthy cells and infect the body.
Data from the latest studies are significant because the majority of participants were classified as vulnerable and were not vaccinated at the time. The study recruited more than 900 participants worldwide and 90% had a condition that put them at risk of developing severe Covid, including cancer, diabetes, obesity and chronic lung disease.
When a single dose of Evushold was given within seven days of signs of Covid infection, their risk of hospitalization or death was reduced by 50 per cent compared with the placebo group. When the drug was given within three days, that figure rose to 88 percent.
“Despite the success of vaccines, many people, such as the elderly, people with co-morbidities and those with weakened immune systems, remain at risk of poor results from severe Covid-19,” said Hugh Montgomery, a professor of intensive care at University College London. and chief researcher for the Evusheld process. ‘[The trial results] show that a single dose of Evushold can prevent the progression of these people to severe Covid-19, with earlier treatment leading to even better results.
Prof. Ward says it will be up to health managers to decide whether to give the drug as a preventative drug – stopping patients from becoming infected with Covid – or to use it as a treatment once people are infected. She added: “The data shows that it is effective to do both. I guess the government would prefer to use this as a treatment, as it is easier to offer a single injection to the infected than 500,000 injections every six months.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare said: “We recognize that Evushold can potentially be used as a treatment for patients who become infected with the virus, and we are closely monitoring clinical trial data.”
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