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NEW YORK, Oct 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. government expects to
be able to provide at no cost more than 1 million doses of
antibody treatments for COVID-19 similar to the one President
Donald Trump received to treat his illness, according to a top
U.S. health official on Friday.
The government's Operation Warp Speed program currently has
"a couple of hundred thousand doses" of the monoclonal antibody
treatments being developed by drugmakers Regeneron
Pharmaceutical Inc and Eli Lilly & Co, U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services official Paul Mango said
on a call with reporters. That would top 1 million doses by the
end of the year, he said.
Mango said that the government will allocate the treatments
to the states based on need, similar to the mechanism used with
Gilead Sciences Inc's antiviral drug remdesivir for
COVID-19.
Both companies have said the drugs were shown to work in
clinical trials and that they have submitted an emergency use
authorization to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Regeneron signed a $450 million deal in July to sell
Operation Warp Speed enough doses of its antibody treatment,
REGN-COV2, to treat up to 300,000 people. Lilly has not
disclosed a deal with the program. The drugmakers were not
immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengalaru and Michael Erman in
New York; writing by Caroline Humer; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama,
Kirsten Donovan)
Astrazeneca (AZN)
