The UAE’s path towards a full recovery from Covid-19 just got a little brighter.
On Saturday, the UAE’s Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) approved the emergency use of a highly effective new treatment for Covid-19.
The move makes the UAE the first country in the world to both license and enable immediate patient use after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave an emergency use authorisation to the antibody treatment.
Ok, but what is this new treatment? It’s called Sotrovimab, and it’s from from healthcare company GSK, and it offers the prospect of reducing hospitalisation for more than 24 hours and fatalities by as much as 85 percent when administered to patients as an early treatment for COVID-19.
The UAE is allowing it for the treatment of patients aged 12 years or older with mild to moderate COVID-19 disease who are at risk of progression to hospitalisation or death. And in bigger news, in pre-clinical studies, Sotrovimab has demonstrated effectiveness as a monotherapy against widely circulating variants of the disease.
“Such a new qualitative achievement would not have been possible had it not been for the UAE leadership’s keenness to proactively address the pandemic, attract and provide innovative medicines that prove effective and efficient, and adopting them as treatment protocols,” said Dr. Abdul Rahman bin Mohammad bin Nasser Al Owais, Minister of Health and Prevention.
“The new medicine will greatly contribute to speeding up the recovery of patients, reducing Covid-19-related deaths and hospitalization period in intensive care units. It will also support the country’s efforts being made to conduct Covid-19 tests and administer vaccines, retaining its leading position among the world’s foremost countries, dealing efficiently with the Covid-19 pandemic,” the minister said.
“This achievement is yet another breakthrough that crowns the painstaking efforts made by our wise leadership, which spares no effort to harness all capabilities and resources to protect the health of UAE people and safeguard the country’s gains achieved over the course of the past years at all levels,” Al Owais added.
The UAE has long been on the forefront of new treatments and vaccination plans, currently leading the world in many regards.
The new drugs, which have been approved after proving effective in treating the new variants of Covid-19, will help speed up the recovery of infected people and reduce deaths among Covid-19 patients.
The UAE state media agency said the move will be a turning point in the ongoing battle against the coronavirus in light of the noticeable progress made by the UAE in providing vaccines and treatments, something which resulted in tangible results including the increase in Covid-19 recoveries and the significant decrease in Covid-19 deaths.
The move proves another thing too–the UAE is a great place to live.
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