Fund Evusheld the preventative COVID19 antibody for immunocompromised

Lockdown and shielding is not over for many people with blood cancer, organ transplants, and other forms of immune compromise. Evusheld should help protect us like vaccines do for others. We don’t make our antibodies so we are not safe. Many of us are still dying. We want to live with COVID19 too.

The USA and other countries recognise monoclonal antibodies are a shield. The MHRA has authorised its use before being exposed to the risk of COVID-19 infection in order to prevent disease.

This could help save our lives now by helping stop us ever getting COVID19. Nobody died in the clinical trial of COVID-19 after receiving Evusheld. We feel abandoned like our lives don’t matter.

More info about Evusheld here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/evusheld-approved-to-prevent-covid-19-in-people-whose-immune-response-is-poor

Thank you for raising the important issue of therapeutic options for immunocompromised patients.

The Government has made neutralising monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs available to those at highest risk of severe COVID-19, including patients with immunosuppression. These treatments are taken after developing symptoms and clinical trial evidence shows that they are effective reducing mortality. Further information on these treatments is available here: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/treatments-for-coronavirus/.

We recognise that many people are also interested in prophylactic treatments that could potentially reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection and are keen for the Government to secure Evusheld (a prophylactic antibody therapy manufactured by AstraZeneca).

We are assessing all the available evidence for Evusheld, so we can make a decision on whether it should become available to UK patients.

We need to be confident that any therapeutics in use in the UK are sufficiently effective against the currently circulating variants. Evusheld is a neutralising monoclonal antibody, and this type of treatment can be made less effective by new variants due to the way in which the drug binds to the virus. In August 2021, Ronapreve, a neutralising antibody, received conditional Marketing Authorisation for both prophylaxis (prevention) and treatment of COVID-19 in the UK. After being used by the NHS between September and December 2021, it had to be withdrawn from clinical policies because it was not effective against the Omicron variant.