PITTSBURGH (TNS) — UPMC continues to push monoclonal antibody treatment, giving it to 5,700 patients, including 2,300 during the past month amid a COVID-19 surge.

If given early enough, most people showing symptoms of COVID-19 don’t get sick enough to even enter the hospital, UPMC doctors said.

“We have found them to be remarkably safe and remarkably effective,” said Dr. Derek Angus, UPMC’s chief innovation officer and chair of the department of critical care medicine.

The treatment involves a one-time intravenous infusion of laboratory-made antibodies similar to the ones the body would make if it were immune to COVID-19. These antibodies interfere with the virus’ ability to enter cells and rapidly spread to cause major harm throughout the body.

The federal government is providing monoclonal antibody treatment for free to health care providers. The extra cost of giving it intravenously and monitoring for side effects, which takes a total of about two hours, is typically covered by health insurance, UPMC doctors said.

Monoclonal antibody treatment must be given within 10 days of a positive COVID-19 test or the start of symptoms.

Doctors say that a patient who has gotten so sick he or she needs hospitalization wouldn’t benefit.

Among UPMC patients, about 70% of people receiving monoclonal antibodies haven’t needed hospitalization, according to Angus.

{p class=”krtText”}He said negative side effects have been “very, very rare.” It can be used on patients as young as 12.

{p class=”krtText”}Monoclonal antibody treatment has been promoted by the program that was called Operation Warp Speed under former President Donald Trump and now called the White House COVID-19 Response Team.

As of February, it wasn’t being widely used around the United States, according to Angus, and UPMC set out to change that.

UPMC now offers it to patients in multiple locations, including locations in the Harrisburg region. Penn State Health and Geisinger are among the other health systems that offer it, with Penn State Health taking it to several hundred patients in nursing homes.

Trump received monoclonal antibody treatment after he was stricken with COVID-19 last fall. More recently, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott received it as a preventive measure after he tested positive, and popular podcaster Joe Rogan said monoclonal antibodies was among a barrage of treatments he received after he recently came down with COVID-19. Rogan has resumed podcasting, apparently recovered.

UPMC doctors stressed that COVID-19 vaccine remains the best protection against the disease, preventing people from reaching the point where they even have to consider using treatment such as monoclonal antibodies.

Dr. John Williams, a UPMC pediatric infectious disease specialist, likened monoclonal antibodies to “several bullets.”

However, “it’s a lot harder to escape from a swarm of antibodies from vaccine. That’s more like a shotgun blast, and all the vaccines remain very effective against delta and the other variants.”

UPMC is also involved in a global trial, known as REMAP, which uses a relatively new method of clinical trials to test new treatments and drugs. Using data and software, REMAP tests combinations of treatments, enabling less effective ones to be discontinued, and allowing more patients to get more of the treatments which work best. It’s enabling COVID-19 patients to receive “recipes” of treatments, with the software helping to determine which are providing benefits.

Angus said the REMAP trial, for example, “helped settle the debate that hydroxychloroquine simply didn’t work.”

On the other hand, it found that inexpensive steroids can help severely ill COVID-19 patients and blood thinners can help moderately ill patients.

“That has helped us to learn, at unprecedented speed, how to best take care of COVID-19 patients,” Angus said.

Angus said the collective result is that the odds of death for people hospitalized with COVID-19 is falling by 5% per month.

Recently, there’s been much talk, especially on social media and in politically conservative circles, about the possible benefits of ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

Ivermectin is commonly used to prevent or get rid of worms in livestock. However, it also has been used successfully to treat some parasitic conditions and infections in humans, especially in Third World countries.

Some studies have purported to show benefits from treating COVID-19 patients with ivermectin. However, the largest of those was recently withdrawn over problems with methods and possible ethical lapses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently warned against self-medicating with ivermectin.

Angus was asked whether ivermectin was among the treatments being tested through the REMAP effort.

He said “there’s already been one pretty large and convincing trial that showed no benefit from ivermectin.”

He noted some groups involved in the REMAP effort have discussed evaluating ivermectin.

“But in general, I would say that we, along with most other scientific bodies, are not incorporating ivermectin as a recommended treatment,” Angus said.