Five Texas infusion centers have exhausted their supply of the only monoclonal antibody therapy used to treat the omicron variant, The Dallas Morning News is reporting.
Centers in Austin, El Paso, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and The Woodlands are not expecting to be able to offer the treatment again until sometime in January when another shipment of the drug sotrovimab is expected from the federal government, the newspaper said.
"We have been shifting supply around, but there’s so little left at this point that it’s not going to buy significant additional time," Chris Van Deusen, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said in a statement.
Other centers around the state are also running low of sotrovimab.
Van Deusen said it’s likely other infusion centers will use the remainder of their sotrovimab in the next few days, The Texas Tribune said.
And, according to The Dallas Morning News, it is the only monoclonal antibody treatment that has shown promise against the variant.
The Tribune noted that monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-made proteins that mimic how the immune system stops the coronavirus from entering healthy cells.
Without the treatment, the Texas health department would be left without an important tool to fight the virus, the Tribune said.
It pointed out some hospitals in New York have also been forced to stop offering monoclonal antibody treatment because they have also run out of sotrovimab.
The Dallas Morning News said estimates attribute 90% of new COVID-19 cases in the region to the omicron variant.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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