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Clinton pharmacy sees drop in demand for COVID monoclonal antibody treatment

Clinton Drug Store said it is seeing a fall in demand for the COVID-19 treatment after the state announced it continues have 'adequate' supply.

CLINTON, Tenn. — The Tennessee Department of Health announced Wednesday the state still has an "adequate" supply of monoclonal antibody regimens on hand to treat people who test positive for COVID-19. 

The treatments can potentially boost a patient's immune response and help prevent severe symptoms from developing if done early in the course of an infection.

Last week, the TDH recommended prioritizing primarily unvaccinated people for the treatment at the recommendation of the National Institutes of Health, saying the recommendation was to save the most at-risk patients to prevent shortfalls in availability. 

On Wednesday, TDH Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey said they have not had to enact that recommendation in actual practice, and now say supply is expected to last through the fall and maybe winter seasons. 

“We may continue to have adequate or even extra supply. We have been able to keep supply at all 220 providers,” she said.

Dr. Tyler Dougherty works at Clinton Drug Store and said there has been a decrease in demand that is increasing the allocation of the treatement. 

"The number of cases that East Tennessee is seeing is dropping, which I believe is helping the demand issue by not having as many people that are as sick needing it,” he said.

The goal is to use monoclonal antibody regimens to treat early COVID-19 cases to prevent them from becoming serious, and not on people who already need to go to the hospital. Hospitals have stronger treatments better suit for severe illness, Dougherty said. 

"View it as something that's allowing the hospital providers a little bit of relief that they're only dealing with the sickest of the sick,” he said.

Doctors ask a series of questions to see if you're qualified for the monoclonal antibody treatment: 

"'How old are you? 'Were you vaccinated?' 'Were you not vaccinated?' Along with, 'What kind of disease stakes do you have?' 'Do you have diabetes?' 'Are you immune compromised?' 'Do you have cardiovascular disease?' 'Are you overweight?'" Dougherty said, 

Any of those risk factors, he said, are going to qualify a patient to get the therapy.

"We typically look for those high risk factors, especially in people who are unvaccinated," he said, saying upward of 90% of people who come asking to receive it are unvaccinated.

The breakdown of people seeking the treatment is in line with observed COVID-19 hospitalizations. Piercey said earlier in September unvaccinated patients made up nearly 90% of all COVID-related hospitalizations across the state. 

The treatment is authorized only under emergency use is by no means a replacement for the vaccine, which offers protection in preventing infection and significantly reducing the severity of breakthrough infections.

 Dougherty said there’s not as much data on the side effects of monoclonal antibody therapy as there is on the Pfizer vaccine, which became the first COVID-19 vaccine to receive FDA approval for adults in August. The Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines remain under the FDA's emergency use authorization.

“When people argue about the safety of the vaccine and the newness of it. If they’re going to apply that, they should also apply it to the monoclonal therapy,” Dougherty said.

Millions have received the COVID-19 vaccine whereas hundreds of thousands have received the antibody treatment. The antibody treatment uses an infusion or injection of synthetic antibodies, cloned in a lab, to create a temporary defense to the coronavirus in the bloodstream.

"Vaccination is really the best thing to do to get out of this pandemic, to be able to prevent COVID from happening, to prevent people from even having to get this monoclonal therapy and it's the safest way to stay healthy and to not get sick,” Dougherty said.

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