Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb (AP Images)

Got­tlieb op-ed: Man­u­fac­tur­ers need to ramp up pro­duc­tion of an­ti­bod­ies as 'Covid in­sur­ance pol­i­cy'

Af­ter Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech scored the FDA’s emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion for their mR­NA-based Covid-19 shot late last week, hopes are high that one or more vac­cines could turn the tide on the pan­dem­ic. But vac­cines will take time to get in­to arms, and a for­mer FDA head is call­ing on drug­mak­ers to dou­ble down on mak­ing an­ti­body ther­a­pies as a “Covid in­sur­ance pol­i­cy” in the mean­time.

In a Wall Street Jour­nal col­umn penned less than 48 hours af­ter Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech’s EUA, for­mer FDA com­mish Scott Got­tlieb opined that man­u­fac­tur­ers have not in­vest­ed enough re­sources in­to stock­pil­ing an­ti­body ther­a­pies — es­pe­cial­ly from Re­gen­eron and Eli Lil­ly, which have al­ready re­ceived EUAs of their own — as a cru­cial back­stop in the US pan­dem­ic re­sponse.

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