Speaker 1: It's Thursday, September two. I'm Oscar Ramrrors from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: We have seen the demand for COVID nineteen monoclonal antibody
Speaker 1: treatments skyrocket in the last few weeks. Some states have
Speaker 1: set up infusion centers where patients can get the treatment
Speaker 1: and are also passing rules where you can get it
Speaker 1: without a doctor's prescription. Karen Weintraub, health reporter at USA
Speaker 1: Today joins us for how this underutilized treatment is gaining traction.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Karen, Thanks for having me. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about monoclonal antibody treatments right now. The
Speaker 1: demand for them is skyrocketing. We've seen Republican governors in Florida, Missouri,
Speaker 1: Texas touting them and saying that they're available to people,
Speaker 1: even opening up these infusion centers so you know, you
Speaker 1: don't have to necessarily go to a hospital. You can
Speaker 1: go to one of these other places to get these treatments.
Speaker 1: But even Dr Fauci said these are very underutilized treatments
Speaker 1: for people that have COVID. So Karen tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about them and then and how they're exploding
Speaker 1: right now. So there are very effective treatment for people
Speaker 1: in the earliest days of a COVID infection who are
Speaker 1: at high risk. So somebody who is over sixty five,
Speaker 1: who's obese, who is diabetic, who has autoimmune issues, all
Speaker 1: of those categories of people are considered at high risk
Speaker 1: for a serious infection with COVID nineteen. If they get
Speaker 1: these drugs within generally about three or four days after
Speaker 1: their first diagnosed or they have developed symptoms, it reduces
Speaker 1: their risk of hospitalization and death by at least seventy
Speaker 1: which is a lot obviously, so they're very effective. They
Speaker 1: have minimal side effects. The issue is they're difficult to deliver. Generally,
Speaker 1: they're delivered via infusion. It takes about a half hour
Speaker 1: of sitting with a drift going into your arm, and
Speaker 1: then they have to watch you for an hour to
Speaker 1: make sure you don't have a bad reaction. Because people
Speaker 1: who are getting these are highly contagious, it can't get
Speaker 1: them in a typical infusion center where you might go
Speaker 1: if you are on dialysis, for instance, or on getting
Speaker 1: cancer care. You obviously don't want to mix people with
Speaker 1: with those can Asians with people who are contagious with COVID,
Speaker 1: so they need separate facilities, and some of them are
Speaker 1: in hospital parking lots. Some of them, as you said,
Speaker 1: are in especially designed clinics. But that's been a challenge
Speaker 1: for some hospitals and medical facilities to set up these
Speaker 1: infusion centers. And what drugs are we talking about here?
Speaker 1: I know regeneration is one of them. That's the one
Speaker 1: that President Trump was receiving when he had COVID. Texas
Speaker 1: Governor Greg Abbott he was receiving the regeneration as well.
Speaker 1: But there's another one too, and UH cannot pronounce it
Speaker 1: for the life of me. The regeneral on drug is
Speaker 1: called regim dash cove and the other one so Trova
Speaker 1: MAB that anything that ends in the letters m AB
Speaker 1: is that's for monoclonal antibody. So the ones there, there
Speaker 1: are three that are approved for COVID, but the one
Speaker 1: made by Lily unfortunately no longer works against the delta variants,
Speaker 1: so that one has been is not being distributed anymore.
Speaker 1: So the regenera on one is the one that you're
Speaker 1: likely to get if you go to a clinic or hospital.
Speaker 1: At the moment, that's the vast majority of it once
Speaker 1: being distributed now from that company. And what kind of
Speaker 1: numbers are we seeing Because you mentioned the article that
Speaker 1: a typical week in June, monoclon anybodies were given in
Speaker 1: about ten people, and this was across the entire Houston
Speaker 1: metropolitan area. This past week, I guess patients were getting
Speaker 1: it in that same area, right, I thought that was
Speaker 1: astounding that number. Um, that's what they told me at
Speaker 1: Houston Methodist Hospital, and then nationally where General sent out
Speaker 1: about twenty five thousand doses a week just a month
Speaker 1: ago and this week the hundred and sixty eight thousand doses.
Speaker 1: So demand really is increasing substantially. Unfortunately, because so many
Speaker 1: people are getting sick with COVID the surge, especially with
Speaker 1: the delta variant, a lot of people are getting sick
Speaker 1: and also people at high risk for serious disease. And
Speaker 1: because of the experience that doctors had during the last
Speaker 1: surge and saw that these monocle land of bodies were helpful,
Speaker 1: they're turning to the more eagerly now, I guess, I
Speaker 1: would say because of that success. And there's a couple
Speaker 1: of interesting actions taken in some of these states as
Speaker 1: well where I guess a surgeon general in Florida said, well,
Speaker 1: you don't even need a doctor's recommendation to take is
Speaker 1: if you're sick or you feel like you're getting sick,
Speaker 1: go to an infusion center and we can treat you
Speaker 1: with this now. And I guess because we've up you
Speaker 1: paid for a lot of these up front, it is
Speaker 1: still free to a lot of people. It should be free. Um,
Speaker 1: they cost about a dose, but the government prepurchased over
Speaker 1: a million and a half of these doses and there's
Speaker 1: still many available. The benefit is much greater for somebody
Speaker 1: who is at higher risk again, somebody who's over sixty five,
Speaker 1: who's a beast diabetic, i mean know, compromised, than it
Speaker 1: is to an otherwise healthy person who is very unlikely
Speaker 1: to end up hospitalized anyway. So generally they are recommended
Speaker 1: for people who have some extra risk. Yeah, definitely, And
Speaker 1: and and all of these monoclone anybody's have been approved
Speaker 1: under emergency use authorization, so they haven't received full approval
Speaker 1: yet either, right. Yeah. The doctor in Houston was sort
Speaker 1: of laughing about the idea that a lot of the
Speaker 1: people he's treating now monoclona anibodies didn't want vaccines because
Speaker 1: they were approved only emergency under an emergency use authorization.
Speaker 1: But now they're they're begging for a monocle goals, which
Speaker 1: are also approved only under an emergency use authorization. Karen,
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask because I follow you on Twitter
Speaker 1: and I saw you had recently went on a vacation
Speaker 1: and it was kind of ruined by a bad test,
Speaker 1: a bad COVID test where you and I think your
Speaker 1: parents said that you were tested positive and then later
Speaker 1: on you got a PCR test and it came out negative.
Speaker 1: So not to name any companies or anything, but how
Speaker 1: did that experience go? Because we had for a long
Speaker 1: time been hearing you know that some of these quick
Speaker 1: tests aren't always as reliable. They're supposed to be very good.
Speaker 1: In this case, we got caught on the wrong end
Speaker 1: of the statistics. I guess this particular test has a
Speaker 1: three or four percent failure rate. Shouldn't happen to three
Speaker 1: of us in the same batch of tests. The company
Speaker 1: has told me that they're checking the batch to make
Speaker 1: sure there's not something wrong with it. But yes, I
Speaker 1: have an eighty six year old high risk father, so
Speaker 1: when I wasn't feeling well. I got a quick test
Speaker 1: to make sure I didn't have a problem. When it
Speaker 1: was positive, we all kind of freaked out. Father and
Speaker 1: mother went to the hospital to get Monacola antibodies actually,
Speaker 1: and there they were retested appropriately and we're told they
Speaker 1: did not, in fact have COVID. By that point, I
Speaker 1: was already five hours into my six hour trip home.
Speaker 1: Um and uh so, yeah, um so. I retested, got
Speaker 1: another different brand rapid test that night, and then got
Speaker 1: a PCR the next day, also negative. My brother, who
Speaker 1: had been with us to day before, spent a lot
Speaker 1: of money changing his flight back to the West Coast,
Speaker 1: so it was to avoid contaminating anyone in case he
Speaker 1: got sick. So it was a lot of chaos created
Speaker 1: from from a false positive. It's better clinically speaking, health
Speaker 1: wise to get a false positive and a false negative.
Speaker 1: False negative means you're contagious and you don't know it,
Speaker 1: and you might go out and infect other people. So
Speaker 1: that's worse from the societal perspective, but it definitely ruined
Speaker 1: my family vacation. Well, glad to hear everybody was healthy
Speaker 1: at least on all of that. Karen Weintraub Health reporter
Speaker 1: at USA Today. Thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm Oscar Romiris and this has been reopening America.
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