As of Monday, the United States has supplied more than half a million drugs with monoclonal antibodies to states to treat non-hospitalized Covid-19 patients, according to the website of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. used.
Since the therapies received emergency use approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in November, the department said it has given 454,087 courses of Eli Lilly treatment and 96,923 courses of Regeneron’s cocktail.
Both treatments are allowed for people 12 years and older who have a high risk of progressing to a severe form of Covid-19. Both were found to reduce the number of Covid-19-related hospital admissions or emergency room visits.
It is unclear how many of the distributed antibody treatments have actually been used; it is not posted by HHS or tracked on state dashboards. Health officials have said they are not being used enough; in Michigan, for example, less than 10% of the available Covid-19 monoclonal antibody treatments have been used, said Dr. William Fales, the medical director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, last week.
The treatments are complicated to administer, partly because hospitals or infusion centers have to create a separate area to treat patients.