These groundbreaking drugs will give us coronavirus immunity until vaccines are ready

[Chris Smith]

• Coronavirus immunity can be obtained by surviving COVID-19 or getting a vaccine, but there’s an additional way to gain limited protection against the new virus: Monoclonal antibody drugs.
• Several companies are testing experimental drugs that can provide short-lived COVID-19 immunity as well as an immune system boost for people who are already infected.
• Monoclonal antibodies work just like the antibodies the immune system produces — they bind to the virus's spike protein and prevent it from latching on to human cells.

There’s no guarantee they’ll work, but health experts are hopeful that the first vaccine candidates to have reached the final stage of testing might be available as soon as this fall or winter. They still have to convince regulators that they’re safe and effective against the novel coronavirus, and that’s the purpose of the large scale Phase 3 studies that are currently underway in the US and around the world. But even if some of these experimental drugs are ready for emergency use by late 2020, the general public won't have access to them until several months later, well into 2021. Logistics and manufacturing issues need to be ironed out before officials can start immunization campaigns, and healthcare professionals will rightfully have access to vaccines before the general public. Even then, only specific high-risk categories of people might qualify for the first round of vaccinations.

Thankfully, the world isn’t putting all its eggs in the vaccine basket when it comes to crafting COVID-19 therapies. Several teams of scientists are testing drugs that might cure COVID-19, including a type of medicine that can also provide temporary immunity to healthy people. And the good news is that these new medications that can provide a limited immunity might be ready even before vaccines roll out.

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These groundbreaking drugs will give us coronavirus immunity until vaccines are ready originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 14 Aug 2020 at 10:53:19 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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