“There is simply not enough to meet the needs of everyone who is going to have Covid in the upcoming weeks and be at risk of severe complications,” said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive. A plentiful supply of effective treatments would be a powerful weapon as the virus again surges across the United States. Fueled by the highly contagious Omicron variant, Covid cases have soared to record highs, and the number of hospitalized patients also has increased sharply, though Omicron tends to cause milder illness than other variants. For most of the pandemic, monoclonal antibodies — a treatment generally administered intravenously at hospitals or clinics — have been the primary option for recently infected patients. But the two most common types of the antibodies don’t appear to work against the Omicron variant, which is quickly becoming the world’s dominant version of the coronavirus.

Source: New York Times January 07, 2022 01:59 UTC