The French health authorities have restricted this Friday, April 29, 2022 the use of an anti-Covid treatment, Xevudy, noting its lack of effectiveness once morest the BA.2 sub-variant and therefore excluding almost any use since this version of the virus is now extremely dominant.
The High Authority for Health (HAS) “maintains the early access authorization of this product only for patients affected by a strain other than the BA.2 sublineage of the Omicron variant”she summarizes in a press release.
This amounts, in fact, to excluding almost any prescription of Xevudy, a synthetic antibody developed by the British GSK, because BA.2 now represents the overwhelming majority of coronavirus contaminations.
In France there is a “virtually exclusive circulation of the BA.2 sub-lineage”noted this Friday the French public health agency in its weekly update.
In France, only two other drugs remain approved once morest Covid
Administered intravenously, Xevudy, which is intended for people recently infected with the coronavirus and at risk of a severe form, had nevertheless proved to be one of the only treatments to remain effective once morest the Omicron variant when it arrived at the end of 2021. .
But, since then, the previous dominant version of Omicron, BA.1, has been supplanted by BA.2, once morest which this treatment is therefore much less effective.
In France, as the HAS reminds us, only two other drugs remain approved once morest Covid, including the current version of Omicron: AstraZeneca’s Evusheld, given preventively to people at risk who cannot benefit from a vaccine. , and Paxlovid, the pill from the Pfizer laboratory.
This targets the same public as Xevudy – people at risk and who have just been infected – but remains little given by doctors, especially in the face of a complex prescription procedure. However, the HAS recently issued an opinion which might make it possible to simplify this.
