FDA Tells Doctors in 8 States to Stop Using COVID-19 Treatment

 

FDA Tells Doctors in 8 States to Stop Using COVID-19 Treatment

By;: Zachary Stieber, The Epoch Times, March 27, 2022:

U.S. drug regulators have directed health care workers in eight states to stop using a COVID-19 treatment because it may not be effective against an Omicron coronavirus subvariant that’s rising in prevalence.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody used to treat COVID-19, can no longer be used in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Providers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands also have been told to stop using stotrovimab.

Regulators believe that the treatment, which was given emergency use authorization in May 2021, “is unlikely to be effective against the BA.2 subvariant,” the FDA said in a statement.

BA.2 is a subvariant of Omicron, a variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the pathogen that causes COVID-19.

According to genomic surveillance conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, BA.2 was responsible for 12.6 percent of COVID-19 cases in the United States in the week ending on March 5. But the agency projected an increase to 35 percent in the week ending on March 19, and the subvariant was pegged as circulating widely in the northeast.

Based on the estimates, BA.2 is responsible for the majority of the cases in the states where the administration of sotrovimab is now limited.

The FDA had indicated in February that it would limit the treatment.

Several studies have indicated that sotrovimab doesn’t perform well against BA.2, including one published in Nature Medicine.

But GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology, the makers of the drug, have said that testing suggested that the treatment retained neutralizing activity against BA.2.

The companies said on March 25 that they were aware of the FDA’s move and are preparing to send a data package to the agency and other regulatory authorities that show a higher dose of sotrovimab works against BA.2……read the rest.

https://gellerreport.com/2022/03/fda-tells-doctors-in-8-states-to-stop-using-covid-19-treatment.html/