Remember The Regeneron Trump Used To Treat? US Promises To Share One Million Antibodies

Presiden AS Donald Trump (Instagram/@RealDonaldTrump)

JAKARTA - The United States (US) government plans to provide one million doses of the COVID-19 antibody made by Regeneron which will be used to treat corona patients in 2020. The drug is used by Trump who was confirmed positive for COVID-19.

A health official said on Friday, October 9 that US President Donald Trump, who was confirmed positive for COVID-19, was given the drug last week as an effort to cure symptoms of the disease.

Operation Warp Speed, a US government program created to combat COVID-19, has secured hundreds of thousands of doses of the monoclonal antibody drug developed by Regeneron Pharmaceutical Inc and Eli Lilly & Co, US, said US Department of Health and Human Services Officer Paul Mango at the time talk on the phone with journalists.

He said there would be one million doses that were secured by the government by the end of this year, he said. Trump got an injection of Regeneron's monoclonal antibody last week.

When interviewed by Rush Limbaug on Friday, Trump said he would make sure the drug was approved for use as soon as possible. The president said that he might not be able to recover if he was not given the drug.

Regeneron Pharmaceutical Inc and Eli Lilly & Co, US say the drug is effective at curing disease in clinical trials. The two companies have also applied for emergency use permits with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

However, the two COVID-19 drugs developed by Regeneron Pharmaceutical Inc and Eli Lilly & Co, US are not the same. Regeneron is a mixture of two antibodies that aim to protect the body from viruses, while the drug made by Eli Lilly & Co is based on one type of antibody.

So far, the efficacy of the two drugs cannot be compared which one is more effective because there is no research. The public also does not know how the FDA will administer the drug's licensing.

Doctors cannot administer the drug to patients as long as there is no FDA approval. Medicines should only be given to patients in clinical trials, or those who are in critical condition - such as the basis for President Trump's drug administration.

Mango said the government would allocate COVID-19 medicines to states as needed. The administration rules also apply to remdesivir, Gilead Sciences Inc.'s COVID-19 drug.

Regeneron agreed to sell a COVID-19 drug, called REGN-COV2, worth 450 million US dollars (around Rp.6 trillion) in July 2020. The drug is planned to be allocated to approximately 300,000 patients.

However, Regeneron and Lilly said that they had not signed any other agreements under the Operation Warp Speed Program framework. Regeneron says some 50,000 doses are currently available.

Meanwhile, earlier this week Lily said that her party plans to produce approximately one million doses of the drug by 2020.