Across the country, medical directors of skilled nursing and long-term care sites say they’ve been scrambling to obtain doses of antibody therapies following a change in federal policy that critics say limit supplies for the vulnerable.
for use in high-risk patients exposed to the virus, and experts in elder care say that is key to best practices in preventing outbreaks in senior facilities. That could include, for example, treating the elderly roommate of an infected nursing home patient. But because of newly limited supplies, many long-term care sites have started to restrict use to only those who are infected.Still, some states have worked to ensure access to mAbs in long-term care sites.
Use in nursing homes rose to more than 3,200 doses in August and nearly 6,700 in September, federal data shows. But weekly usage dropped sharply from mid-September through early October after the HHS policy change. Demand for monoclonal antibody treatments has eased as cases of Covid have declined across the U.S. For the week ending Oct. 27, an average of nearly 72,000 daily cases were reported, a decline of about 20 percent from two weeks prior. Still, there were 2,669 confirmed cases among nursing home residents the week ending Oct. 24, and 392 deaths, according to theAt least some of those deaths might have been prevented with timely monoclonal antibody therapy, Worz said.