WHO adds two more medications for treatment of COVID-19

As the more infectious Omicron version of the coronavirus causes an unprecedented spike in cases worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) has added two more medications to its list of recommended treatments for COVID-19.

The UN agency's panel of international experts declared in the guidelines published by the British Medical Journal that the medicine Baricitinib, which is also used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, is "highly recommended" in combination with corticosteroids for patients with severe or critical COVID-19.

According to the panel, the medicine minimises the requirement for ventilation and has been demonstrated to improve patients' odds of survival with no increase in bad responses.

The panel also awarded Sotrovimab, an investigational monoclonal antibody therapy, a "conditional recommendation" for patients with non-severe COVID-19 but the highest risk of hospital admission. Monoclonal antibodies are synthetic antibodies that replicate the body's natural defence system.

The new treatment guidelines come as the pandemic spreads across the globe. More than 15 million new cases of COVID-19 were recorded by the WHO in the last week — the most ever in a single week – thanks to the Omicron version, which is rapidly replacing the Delta variant practically everywhere.

The recommendations were based on fresh evidence from seven trials, including almost 4,000 patients with COVID-19 in non-severe, severe, and critical stages.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a French humanitarian organisation, applauded the new guidelines and encouraged governments to resolve patent protections so that as many people as possible may benefit from the therapies.

Baricitinib is manufactured by Eli Lilly in the United States, and while generic versions are accessible in India and Bangladesh, patents are still in place in many other countries, including Brazil and Indonesia.

"For over two years, we have watched helplessly as people died of COVID-19 as epidemics raged around them. Infectious diseases medical adviser for the MSF Access Campaign Dr. Márcio da Fonseca, stated in a declaration that "in countries where MSF works."

"Saving the lives of individuals with severe and critical infections relies greatly on having access to inexpensive medicines that we can add to the steroids, oxygen, and close supportive care that we already provide in our initiatives It will be inhumane if novel medicines are inaccessible in resource-constrained contexts merely because they are trademarked and too expensive," said Dr. Márcio da Fonseca