For at-risk patients with COVID-19, a new therapy reaches South Florida hospitals
An experimental COVID-19 therapy made famous by President Donald Trump — monoclonal antibody treatment — is the latest tool that South Florida hospitals have for preventing death and severe illness from the novel virus.
But there’s a catch: it has to be given early for it to work, so hospital officials are pushing the message that people who feel ill should get tested for the SARS-CoV-2 virus and, if positive, call their physician or report to the emergency room as soon as possible.
That requires a certain degree of vigilance, said Madeline Camejo, chief pharmacy officer at Baptist Health of South Florida.
“People think they have the cold or they have sniffles, then three days have gone by and they’re getting a little sicker, then they have fever and chills,” Camejo said. “Some either break it at that point, or they start getting really sick and end up in our ER.”
But by the time many people get to the ER, Camejo said, “it may be too late to give you this.”
The treatment is made by two companies — Regeneron and Eli Lilly — and are being allocated to area hospitals by the Florida Department of Health, according to hospital officials. State health officials are regulating the supply because the medicines are under an emergency authorization by the federal government.
Most of South Florida’s major hospitals say they have a good supply, though they are have strict criteria of who to give it to, and when — within 10 days of a positive test, but the earlier the better.
Most people with any kind of underlying health condition that could put them at risk, such as diabetes, a heart condition or being on immunosuppressant drugs, can qualify to receive the therapies. So can anyone over the age of 65.
In Miami-Dade and Broward counties, hospitals including Baptist, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Jackson Health System, Memorial Healthcare System, Broward Health and Larkin all said they have access to the therapies.
The treatments work as intravenous, hour-long infusions of man-made, synthetic antibodies designed to target the spike protein on the surface of the COVID-19 virus.
That can help the body gear up its immune system to slow viral growth, but physicians say this is only beneficial in the early stages of the infection, and can actually be counterproductive in the later stage, when patients need to be hospitalized. At that point, their immune systems actually need help calming down so they can stop attacking their own organs, particularly their lungs.
“If you’re in a hospital, on a ventilator or in an [intensive care unit], it’s not shown to be helpful,” said Dr. Robert Goldszer, chief medical officer at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach. “The key message that I give to people about this is, if you don’t feel well, be in touch with your doctor ... this can really turn things around, but it has to be given early.”
The Miami Beach hospital has its own success story in its chief nursing officer, Wendy Stuart, who was also the first patient to receive the therapy there in late November.
Stuart, who had a “massive headache and body aches” just after testing positive, got her infusion the next day.
“The next day all my body aches were gone and my headache had improved by like 90%,” Stuart said. “That’s how quickly it helped me.”
Her sore throat and fatigue took longer to resolve, but Stuart said she is feeling back to normal and believes the treatment helped her.
Since Stuart, Mount Sinai has given the treatment to 76 other patients, Goldszer said, about half of them referred by physicians and the other half from the emergency room.
Goldszer said he sees a lot of potential in the therapy for preventing hospitalizations and is working with local nursing homes to get their residents access to the newly available drugs. And fewer hospital admissions, Goldszer emphasized, means fewer serious cases and fewer deaths.
“This means that we should be able to decrease that terrible number we see every day,” Goldszer said. “The number of people dying from COVID-19.”
This story was originally published December 11, 2020 at 5:14 PM.
