US pauses use of Eli Lilly Covid-19 mAb combo in six more states due to variants from Brazil, India
As the combined frequency of the Covid-19 variants first identified in Brazil and South Africa now exceeds 10% in Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, Oregon and Washington, the US said Wednesday that it’s halting all shipments to those states of Eli Lilly’s mAb combo to treat Covid-19 prior to hospitalizations.
The FDA recommends that health care providers in those six states use Regeneron’s mAb cocktail as an alternative authorized monoclonal antibody therapy because it’s more effective against the variants than the Lilly treatment.
“REGEN-COV is likely to retain activity against the P.1 and B.1.351 variants,” the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response and FDA said in a statement.
Previously, the US halted shipments of the Lilly combo of bamlanivimab and etesevimab to Illinois and Massachusetts because of the variant first identified in Brazil. FDA also revoked the EUA for bamlanivimab alone last month because it was no longer as effective as a combo therapy.
The continually shifting landscape of mAbs to treat Covid-19 also saw the addition of an EUA for another mAb treatment from Vir and GlaxoSmithKline on Wednesday. Vir says their single antibody can neutralize each of the variants scientists suspect are proliferating, although it’s still unknown how many doses of the new mAb will be available.