Astra Zeneca’s Evusheld preventative COVID19 Monoclonal Antibody injection licensed in UK. But so far the NHS refuses to pay for it!
Finally many months after the USA, the UK regulator has approved this product designed for patients like me with blood cancer and other causes of immune compromise. Perhaps we will begin to feel more safe and less abandoned.
One dose of this injection can provide months of a similar level of preventative shielding against COVID19 to that which most people get when the vaccines do work.
No patients in the clinical trial died of COVID19 after receiving this injection. But in a group half the size five people on placebo did die
https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2022/astrazenecas-antibody-combination-evusheld-authorised-for-use-in-great-britain-for-pre-exposure-prophylaxis-prevention-of-covid-19.html
People with immune compromise are still dying of COVID19 so it is essential that the NHS rapidly agrees to fund this treatment, and rolls it out in a fair and easy to access way, and that enough doses are purchased.
UPDATE: it turns out that our Government and the NHS cares so little about the immunocompromised being able to LIVE with less fear of dying from Covid-19 that they CANCELLED an order for a million doses! See https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/as-data-nears-u-k-rethinks-astrazeneca-covid-19-antibody-deal
It is also crucial that patients are warned that vaccines may not have worked for them, tested to see if they have had an antibody response, given this new treatment as a protection, and allowed to keep themselves safe by for example working from home. But it is also vital that antiviral treatments must be made more easily available for any who do still get covid19 despite being protected by these monoclonal antibodies.
Sign our petition
Sign our petition to fund Evusheld for blood cancer and other causes of immune compromise. These preventative antibodies massively reduce the risk of Covid19 hospitalisations and death
I am concerned given recent fiascos regarding antivirals, extra vaccine doses, and priority PCR kits, that this roll out will be far from smooth and this would be a good time to write to your MP, asking why there is no corresponding announcement of funding for the treatment to be given immediately to all of us shielders desperate to get on with our lives!
Hugh Montgomery, principle investigator of the Provent trial and professor of intensive care medicine at University College London, was quoted in the BMJ as follows, “Sensible behaviours combined with vaccination offer excellent protection from severe illness for most of the UK. But for some our new freedoms impose a prison sentence: they do not mount adequate antibody responses to vaccines, meaning that they are more vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection and to more serious consequences from it. For them, one option is to receive the antibody through an intramuscular injection.” He added, “Side effects seem mild and few and protection long lasting.”
