CRMC Beginning New Emergency Treatment For High-Risk COVID Patients

Cookeville Regional Medical Center can now administer an emergency-use drug to help reduce hospitalization and the risk of death for certain COVID patients.

The FDA granted emergency authorization for Bamlanivmab in November to be used only for patients aged 65 or older or with certain medical factors. As important, the drug must be given within 10 days of symptoms to a patient who has tested positive for COVID and has not been hospitalized.

“This is a big deal because we want to give this early, very, very soon in these high risk patients as soon as we can to ameliorate their symptoms and to decrease their complications and to keep them out of the hospital and to keep them alive and as well as possible,” CRMC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lee Taylor said.

Taylor said the drug decreases symptoms and keeps people out of the hospital. Taylor said he saw upclose what the drug can do last Friday when a senior citizen received the one-hour treatment.

“This person was quite senior, very, very symptomatic,” Taylor said. “I mean, he just felt like he could barely walk in the door. I don’t think he could walk. Very bad malaise, a lot of fever. By the time he was walking out, his temperature had gone down to normal and it did not go back up.”

The drug will only be administered to high-risk individuals per FDA rules. You must be 65 or older (or) have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 35 or higher (or) have diabetes mellius, (or) have chronic kidney disease (or) have an immunosuppressive disease or take immunosuppressive therapy.

A patient can also qualify if he/she is 55 or older and has cardiovascular disease, hypertension or COPD.

Cookeville Regional has a “pretty good dosage on hand” according to Taylor. He said very few medical centers across the state are administering this treatment currently.

Taylor said the drug, created by Eli Lilly, is administered in the vein over a one-hour period. The patient must wait for one additional hour for observation. It is a single-dose treatment. Side effects in the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine include headache, nausea, and dizziness.

In the study, patients over 65 or those with high BMI who received the drug saw a 70 percent reduction in hospitalization from COVID. Among all patients in the high risk groups, the reduction stood at 75 percent. Taylor said the study is relatively small, which does give him pause.

“That makes me a little anxious,” Taylor said. “There were only hundreds of patients, not tens of thousands. But I’m sure the FDA felt the pressure that the results are so good and we’ve got so many infected people and so many dying that they felt like we just got to, you know, release this.”

CRMC reached out to local doctors Monday to share the information on the treatment. Taylor said they will next reach out to local nursing homes and long-term care facilities to share the information. the key, Taylor said, getting patients in treatment quickly.

Residents who meet the criteria should talk with their health care provider about the treatment. Local doctors can refer patients for the treatment. Taylor said if a resident cannot meet with his/her doctor so quickly, they can visit the Cookeville Regional Urgent Care Center on North Cedar Avenue where they will be checked for candidacy. The center is open 7am-7pm seven days per week.

“We want to work really, really hard for the sake of the good health of everybody that lives around here to have these patients be as healthy as possible and not need to be hospitalized, not have severe shortness of breath and to keep them out of here and out of the ICU,” Taylor said.

And Taylor said, everyone needs to be wearing a mask.

“Last night, six people walked by me with no mask on,” Taylor said. “I’m like, ‘if you worked with me, you would have your mask on.'”