Demand is low, but shortage looming for antibody drugs

U.S. health officials are seeing an astonishing lack of demand for COVID-19 medicines that may help keep infected people out of the hospital, drugs they rushed out to states over the past few weeks as deaths set records.

Red tape, staff shortages, testing delays and strong skepticism are keeping many patients and doctors from these drugs, which supply antibodies to help the immune system fight the coronavirus.

Only 5 percent to 20 percent of doses the federal government allocated have been used.

Ironically, government advisers met Wednesday and Thursday to plan for the opposite problem: potential future shortages of the drugs as COVID-19 cases continue to rise.

Many hospitals have set up lottery systems to ration what's expected to be a limited supply.

Only 337,000 treatment courses are available and there are 200,000 new COVID-19 cases a day, “so the supply certainly cannot meet the demand,” said Dr. Victor Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine.

Antibodies are made by the body's immune system to fight the virus, but it can take several weeks after infection for the best ones to form.

The drugs aim to help right away, by supplying concentrated doses of one or two antibodies that worked best in lab tests. The government is providing them for free, but there's sometimes a fee for the IV required to administer the drugs.

Eli Lilly and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals have emergency authorization to supply their antibody drugs while studies continue.

But the medicines must be used within 10 days of the onset of symptoms to do any good.

Confusion over where to find the drugs and delays in coronavirus test results have conspired to keep many away.

“It can take anywhere between two and four days for results to come back and that's absolutely precious time” for the drugs to have a chance to help, Dr. Keith Boell of Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania told the experts panel.

“Our clinics have everything from a bus stop to a buggy stop,” serving big cities and horse-driven Amish communities, he said. “We really want to get these into anybody they can help” but it's hard.

Many states and health centers weren't ready for the sudden availability of the drugs, said Dr. Ryan Bariola of the University of Pittsburgh's 30-hospital system. It can be a nightmare for doctors or urgent care centers to figure out if a patient qualifies.

“How do you get it done? Do you call your local hospital? They may not have an infusion center set up. For a lot of independent physicians, this is very hard,” he said.

The crunch comes as vaccine efforts begin across the United States, monopolizing attention and staff.

States “didn't see this coming … and have limited bandwidth” to deal with this on top of allocating vaccines, said Connie Sullivan, president of the National Home Infusion Association.