It on­ly took the Omi­cron BA.2 sub­vari­ant three busi­ness days to go from shut­ting down Glax­o­SmithK­line and Vir Biotech­nol­o­gy’s Covid-19 treat­ment sotro­vimab in 22 states, as of last Fri­day, to the FDA com­plete­ly shut­ting off use of the mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body na­tion­wide on Tues­day af­ter­noon.

The de­ci­sion was made as the CDC now es­ti­mates that the pro­por­tion of Covid-19 cas­es caused by BA.2 is above 50% na­tion­wide.

“Sotro­vimab is no longer au­tho­rized to treat COVID-19 in any U.S. re­gion due to in­creas­es in the pro­por­tion of COVID-19 cas­es caused by the Omi­cron BA.2 sub-vari­ant,” the FDA said in a state­ment.

While Omi­cron and its sub­vari­ant haven’t strained the health sys­tem like pre­vi­ous vari­ants, at least so far, they have elim­i­nat­ed the use of sev­er­al key drugs from the US ar­ma­men­tar­i­um of Covid treat­ments.

But GSK and Vir made clear on Tues­day that sotro­vimab is far from done. In ad­di­tion to prepar­ing to sub­mit new da­ta to the FDA to sup­port a high­er dose of sotro­vimab to treat the BA.2 sub­vari­ant, the com­pa­nies are al­so still mov­ing ahead with their plans to sub­mit for a full FDA ap­proval for sotro­vimab in the sec­ond half of this year.

The pair al­so still ex­pect to man­u­fac­ture ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2 mil­lion dos­es in the first half of 2022, and ad­di­tion­al dos­es in the sec­ond half of the year.

They al­so still ex­pect to com­mence two Phase III tri­als this quar­ter, ac­cord­ing to a Vir SEC fil­ing, to as­sess the use of sotro­vimab in un­in­fect­ed im­muno­com­pro­mised pa­tients to de­ter­mine whether sotro­vimab can pre­vent symp­to­matic Covid in­fec­tion.

One tri­al is a plat­form tri­al, and the oth­er is a com­pa­ny-spon­sored tri­al, known as COMET-STAR, al­though the pri­ma­ry end­points for both are the in­ci­dence of symp­to­matic PCR-con­firmed Covid-19. Vir said COMET-STAR re­sults are still ex­pect­ed to come as ear­ly as the sec­ond half of this year, while ini­tial da­ta from the UK’s RE­COV­ERY Tri­al, which is eval­u­at­ing sotro­vimab among pa­tients hos­pi­tal­ized with Covid in the UK, is al­so ex­pect­ed in the sec­ond half of 2022.

But the loss of sotro­vimab right now in the US means the land­scape for Covid-19 treat­ments con­tin­ues to dwin­dle, with Eli Lil­ly’s bebtelovimab serv­ing as the last re­main­ing mAb.

Since last Sep­tem­ber, the US bought al­most $2 bil­lion worth of sotro­vimab cours­es, ac­cord­ing to BAR­DA, and shipped more than 912,000 cours­es to states (as of Sun­day), ac­cord­ing to the As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary for Pre­pared­ness and Re­sponse. Vir said it ex­pects to rec­og­nize over $1 bil­lion in sotro­vimab col­lab­o­ra­tion rev­enues in the first half of this year.

Three oth­er mAbs en­tered the grave­yard of Covid-19 treat­ments pre­vi­ous­ly as they were halt­ed due to wan­ing ef­fec­tive­ness against the dom­i­nant strain, in­clud­ing two block­busters from Eli Lil­ly (bam­lanivimab/ete­se­vimab and bam­lanivimab) and one block­buster com­bo mAb from Re­gen­eron (casiriv­imab/imde­vimab).

On the pos­i­tive side: More than $1 bil­lion of bebtelovimab has been ac­quired so far, and ear­ly da­ta sug­gest it will still stand up to BA.2.

On the neg­a­tive side: Con­gress has yet to fi­nal­ize ad­di­tion­al funds for ac­quir­ing more mAbs from Lil­ly, As­traZeneca’s pro­phy­lac­tic mAb, and an­tivi­ral pills from Pfiz­er and Mer­ck to treat Covid-19.

An agree­ment for $10 bil­lion in new funds has been agreed to in prin­ci­ple, but $5 bil­lion of that is like­ly de­vot­ed to pay­ing for the next round of Pfiz­er’s Paxlovid.

Dupixent, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug from Sanofi and Regeneron, has cleared a high-stakes Phase III study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the companies announced Thursday morning.

If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.

Incyte touted an accelerated approval for its PD-1 retifanlimab in a rare skin cancer on Wednesday, roughly a year and a half after the drug suffered a rejection in squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCAC).

Retifanlimab, marketed as Zynyz, was approved for metastatic or recurrent locally advanced Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), a fast-growing skin cancer typically characterized by a single, painless nodule. It’s roughly 40 times rarer than melanoma, according to the nonprofit Skin Cancer Foundation — but incidence is growing, particularly among older adults, Incyte said in its announcement.

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel faced a barrage of questions from the Senate health committee on Wednesday but emerged mostly unscathed as he defended the quadrupling of the price of the company’s blockbuster Covid-19 vaccine in the US, from about $26 per dose to $130 per dose.

What’s behind that rise in price, many senators on both sides of the aisle questioned, and Bancel offered a variety of reasons. First and foremost, the company is expecting a 90% reduction in demand for its vaccine next fall, when the FDA is likely to roll out another booster campaign to fight Covid-19.