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In this case, too, the choice of words of the former US president is wrong.
Donald Trump spoke of a "miracle" when he was treated with an antibody drug from the US company Regeneron in 2020 after his corona infection and was quickly on the way to recovery.
In fact, there are many unanswered questions and no reason to hope for a panacea.
But it is still conceivable that drugs like the one used by Trump can help to contain the pandemic.
Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) can also imagine this.
At a price of 400 million euros, his ministry has ordered a total of 200,000 doses of two such drugs for Germany as the first EU country.
One corresponds to that of Regeneron, the second to a similar development by the US company Eli Lilly.
Both are not vaccines, but are intended to cause a milder course of a corona infection.
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Spahn announced the procurement of the drugs in an interview with "Bild am Sonntag", amid the debate about failures in the preparation and organization of the large-scale vaccination campaign.
Antibodies produced in the laboratory are used, which attack the virus at a precisely defined location after an infection and thus prevent it from penetrating human cells.
Spahn hopes that "individual Covid-19 infected patients with the risk of a severe course could benefit from treatment with these drugs," said a statement from the ministry.
Hopes in these drugs are dampened not only by the very high price of around 2000 euros per dose, but also by the fact that there is only an emergency approval for them in the USA and no approval at all in the EU.
Spahn has therefore stipulated that the drugs will initially only be used at German university hospitals.
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Another restriction is that, according to previous experience in the USA, the drugs are not suitable for people whose disease has already taken a severe or even life-threatening course.
In addition, there has so far only been reliable evidence for a “lowering of the risk of death, ie for the effectiveness of drugs, in animals, including primates, but not in humans,” said FDP health expert Andrew Ullmann WELT.
So the effectiveness has not yet been determined.
But “it can be considered certain”, says Ullmann, “that these drugs reduce the viral load in the human body”.
It is therefore at least conceivable that infected people will become less seriously ill.
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Accordingly, Leif-Erik Sander, immunologist and lung expert at the Berlin Charité, welcomes the fact that “we are now basically getting access to this therapy”.
If these so-called monoclonal neutralizing antibodies are given in the very early phase, i.e. a maximum of three days after a positive PCR test or a maximum of ten days after the onset of symptoms, "they seem suitable for reducing the course of the disease".
Prevention of severe disease
The antibodies would have to be given preventively before a severe course of the disease develops, Sander told WELT.
Infected people “with a high risk of severe disease” could therefore benefit most if they were given these antibody preparations at an early stage.
In the opinion of the Greens health expert Janosch Dahmen, this could result in a specific application.
"These drugs could be suitable for situations that currently often exist in Germany, for example for corona outbreaks in nursing homes," said Dahmen WELT.
In such situations it would be "very good if we had drugs that could alleviate the disease progression in high-risk patients quickly after the infection was detected and thus also reduce the risk of death".
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Dahmen is critical of the fact that "such approaches are only now being pursued in Germany and that no investments have been made in them earlier".
Spahn had "been one-sided fixated on vaccinations for too long according to the motto 'we will have it soon'" and let other options take a back seat.
In Damen's view, drugs to reduce the viral load are "important because Corona is not always about life or death".
Because survivors can have serious long-term consequences.
“It can be assumed that such consequences will be less if the acute course of the disease is milder.
Those drugs seem to be able to contribute to this. ”This is another reason why, according to Dahmen,“ the minister should have included them earlier ”.
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The SPD health politician Sabine Dittmar also believes that not only vaccines but also such drugs are necessary: "The monoclonal drugs are another way of combating the coronavirus," said Dittmar WELT.
It is true that vaccine development is "understandably the focus of attention at the moment".
But it is also important to advance the development of therapies that help prevent severe courses of Covid-19.
However, when using the agent, care must be taken "that, due to its novelty and complexity, it is only used initially in the treatment of Covid 19 patients and in very experienced clinics," emphasized Dittmar.
Due to the many provisional issues with the active ingredients and the lack of EU approval, Ulmann of the FDP also believes that it is right that these drugs are initially only used at university clinics.
They are still "at the stage of scientific studies" and university clinics have experience with this.
"There you now have to find out," said Ullmann, "whether the use of these drugs in infected risk patients at an early stage mitigates the disease progression and lowers the risk of death." It makes sense to spend money on this.
It must always be clear, however, that the patients “are in fact study participants”, emphasizes Ullmann.
In the case of drugs without approval, "it should not be the case that, following the Russian model of the 'Sputnik' vaccination, something is simply administered without pointing out the open outcome of the procedure".
More and more hospitals are becoming corona hotspots
In Berlin, a hospital had to be quarantined because of evidence of the British Corona variant.
Other German clinics are now also reporting worrying corona outbreaks.
Source: WORLD / Marcus Tychsen