An anti-Covid ready to be administered in Switzerland

Sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody developed by the Ticino laboratory Humabs Biomed in partnership with the British giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to fight Covid-19 is now ready to be administered in Switzerland

Evoking his great satisfaction, Filippo Riva, operational director (COO) of the company, owned by the Californian listed on Nasdaq Vir Biotechnology, indicates that “Switzerland has acted quickly enough to make this drug available to people at risk of being hospitalized or suffering from a serious evolution ”, we could read on Friday on the RSI website.

Very high efficiency

The effi cacity appears to be very high at the early stage of the disease. “The antibody is able to reduce the hospitalization rate very significantly,” says Davide Corti, head of the laboratory. He added that according to field data, still preliminary, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where the antibody has been administered to thousands of people, mortality has been reduced by 97%.

Coming back to the doses ordered by Berne, Filippo Riva underlines that sotrovimab is “much more complex than a vaccine, therefore the availability is less, and the cost is also higher”. The COO indicates that doses of other antibodies have also been purchased by the Confederation, but “to know if they will be sufficient, we must first understand how the pandemic will evolve”.

Covered by the Confederation

In mid-July, the Federal Office for public health (Ofsp) had reserved 3,000 doses of Sotrovimab with GSK on the recommendation of the Covid-19 Taskforce. Although it has not yet officially received a Swiss marketing authorization, it could however already be used during the approval procedure to treat patients with Covid-19.

The Ofsp had also indicated that the Confederation would cover the cost of outpatient treatment pending reimbursement by compulsory health insurance.

Sotrovimab is already temporarily authorized in 13 markets, including the United States, European Union and Japan.

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