Eli Lilly: US government stops distribution of Covid-19 antibody treatment due to spread of coronavirus variants

“The U.S. government has enabled direct ordering of bamlanivimab and etesevimab together as well as etesevimab alone, to pair with bamlanivimab that sites of care have on hand,” Lilly said in the statement. “We believe that sites with access to bamlanivimab and etesevimab for administration together should use that therapy over bamlanivimab alone. We remain committed to ensuring patients who need access to neutralizing antibody therapy can get it.”

In May, Dan Skovronsky, Lilly’s senior vice president and chief science officer told CNN that even early on, it was investigating several antibodies for additional versions of its Covid-19 treatments.

Eli Lilly went with the single antibody approach in its first treatment because the one antibody seemed potent enough. When a treatment requires more antibodies mixed together at higher doses, “the more difficult it is to manufacturer” Skovronsky said; at the time, there wouldn’t have been enough capacity to make all the doses needed.

“The optimal scenario was one antibody at a relatively low dose, but if it has to be two antibodies, higher doses or even three antibodies mixed together at higher doses, we’ll do whatever it takes to make effective medicine for patients,” Skovronsky said in May.