The world is right to concentrate on the news from eligibility to have with COVID-19 vaccine updates. But if we neglect the need for treatments and vaccines, we will make a critical mistake. For several years, vaccines may not cover everyone. Not everybody is covered by vaccines. And as inflammation in hospitals and nursing homes threatens, urgent care will be required. It is therefore vital that we carry out research treatments to restrict and cure COVID-19.
Remember influenza, targeting widespread and successful vaccines every year. However, because there’s no perfect vaccine, flu therapies like Tamiflu or Relenza continue to be critical because these medications prevent hospitalisation and save lives. We need COVID-19 drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza.
To date, only one intravenous residual treatment for hospitalised patients has been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Other intravenous therapies have also been approved, including convalescent plasma; bamlanivimab as the monoclonal antibody drug; and casirivimab and imdevimab for emergency use ambulatory treatments a cocktail of single-clonal antibodies (EUA).
While these medicines can be useful, their intravenous administration requirements seriously hinder their widespread use. As EUAs are released in an emergency, data are far less than required for the full approval of the FDA on drug risk and benefits.
The widespread and uncontrolled use of numerous EUA drugs has made it difficult to perform proper clinical trials with randomised treatments for other new experimental treatments since it is unethical to ask a patient to participate in a clinical trial if they can or may not get EUA approved treatment. More randomised clinical trials are urgently needed.
