Southern Illinois Healthcare is pausing monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID, due to a short supply and the fact that two of the three existing treatments are not effective against the omicron variant.
Unlike regular drugs, which are purchased by hospitals directly, monoclonal antibodies are purchased and distributed by the state. SIH doctor Joshua Miksanek said the state is still working on making the one effective monoclonal antibody treatment available.
"Unfortunately it's not nearly as widely available in supply as the Regeneron product we're primarily using now," he said. "So that is going through state processes, I believe Illinois has theirs, they're figuring out how to distribute it, it's going to be more limited in supply than what we're used to."
He said the limited supply may mean the drug is reserved for those at the highest risk of severe COVID.
While COVID numbers have been going up across the state, Miksanek said he's optimistic based on what he's seen so far. He said most of the patients he's seen have had milder cases than those who contracted the delta variant and he hopes that will continue to be the case.
"I'm calling it personally, the flu-ification of COVID so far, and I'm hoping that plays out, where yes, flu kills people every year, yes flu can make you very sick, before COVID most people went on with their life and they didn't worry they were going to die of the flu," Miksanek said. "It's looking more likely that that's what omicron is looking like at the ground level, is that everyone's gonna get it, a lot of people are going to have a couple of days of feeling pretty bad, some people are going to get a little sicker, have to be hospitalized because they're weak or they can't eat or they get dehydrated. A few people are going to still have those severe respiratory things but we're seeing so much less of that than we were a week ago."
He said that while he's hopeful about omicron's severity, there's still a chance that hospitals could become overwhelmed due to staff shortages.
