(Photo courtesy of UW Medicine)
There are two basic types of COVID therapeutics available: anti-viral drugs and monoclonal antibodies. UW professor of medicine, Doctor Shireesha Dhanireddy, says the anti-viral, Paxlovid, is there to treat COVID, but they want to prioritize it for people at highest risk. That means people who are immunocompromised because they’ve had cancer treatment or an organ transplant – or because they have health conditions, like heart disease, that increase their risk of dying from COVID. “If you don’t have risk factors for disease progression, and you’ve been vaccinated and boosted,” Doctor Dhanireddy says, “the likelihood of you getting hospitalized and dying from this infection is extremely low. And so, these therapeutics are really meant for people who are at risk for getting sick from COVID.” Evusheld is a monoclonal antibody treatment meant to prevent COVID, but Doctor Dhanireddy says they also want to reserve that for cancer and transplant patients, or others at high risk of death from COVID.
Doctor Dhanireddy also hopes you’ll remember, “If you are amongst the people that are at highest risk, to really seek out the therapies that we know work. Many people who want to try home remedies that are vaccinated, boosted, don’t have risk factors – I just want to make sure that they are not doing harm, but they may not do any good.”
There’s more in the video from UW Medicine below:
