INDIANAPOLIS — The pandemic continues to rage on in the Hoosier state and doctors at Franciscan Health are making the transition to a new treatment to help patients.
“Still extremely busy, showing no signs up letting up at this point,” Dr. Christopher Doehring, the vice president of medical affairs for Franciscan Health Central Indiana, said.
This comes as Indiana is seeing some of its highest hospitalization and case numbers.
“You are talking about hospitalized patients or even outpatients and the spread of the presumed omicron patient has really accelerated over the last week,” Doehring said.
Doctors in Indianapolis continue to use another tool in the fight against the coronavirus, monoclonal antibody treatment. A monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19 is different than a vaccine.
“We still use them for high-risk patients, he said. "The demand and the interest has certainly picked up as the pandemic has gone along."
The doctors at Franciscan Health say it’s not showing to be as effective when fighting the omicron variant
“The one big change that’s happening right now with omicron is that the two different options that we have for the last several months seem to be less effective against Omicron, so we are actually having to shift to a third therapy at this point,” Doehring said.
This all comes as doctors at Franciscan Health are in the middle of the transition to the third therapy right now.
“This third one is called Sotrovimab, it’s just a different monoclonal antibody from a different manufacturer and it does seem to be effective against omicron, whereas the other two have had concerns as how effective they are against omicron," he added.
Doehring recommends that the monoclonal antibody treatment be used for patients who are in the high-risk category.
“The interest in getting monoclonal antibodies is really beyond what the supply will allow for, so we are really having to prioritize for high-risk patients,” Doehring concluded.
