“The anti-Covid vaccines have been and continue to be fundamental, but they don’t work on everyone. This is why we must not abandon the other weapons at our disposal”. This was stated by Massimo Andreoni, scientific director of the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases ( Simit), in his speech at the event “mAbs in Early Treatment. Controversies and consensus in the fragile patient with Covid-19: we do not create antibodies”, promoted by GlaxoSmithKline, which was held this morning in Rome. “All vaccines, no only those against Covid, when administered to people with not particularly good immunity, may not work”, explains the expert. “For these patients there are other options. In addition to antivirals, in reality only one drug that continues to be used effective, we have some monoclonal antibodies”, explains Andreoni. “Compared to the antiviral, monoclonal antibodies have the advantage of being well tolerated by patients taking other drugs. they bring with them the concept of early treatment: they prevent the virus from entering the cell, unlike the antiviral which acts on a virus that has already entered”. According to Andreoni, monoclonal antibodies are to date the best weapon we have for “fragile” subjects, those who continue to fall ill with Covid and who risk ending up in hospital. “Real-life studies indicate that some monoclonals, such as sotrovimab, still work well and may protect against severe disease.”
