The details differ, but all of the monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 bind to the virus’s spike protein, preventing the virus from infecting human cells. Some monoclonal-antibody treatments for COVID-19 consist of a single antibody others of a cocktail of several. But many countries either can’t meet the impending demand for sotrovimab or can’t access it at all, which will increase the burden for an “already stressed health-care system”, says Rajesh Gandhi, an infectious-disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. US health officials have said they will ration sotrovimab, allotting it to states on the basis of numbers of infections and hospitalizations and the prevalence of Omicron. These findings are already affecting health-care policy.

The preprints report that only two antibodies show strong evidence of retaining some ability to thwart the variant: sotrovimab, developed by Vir Biotechnology in San Francisco, California, and GSK, headquartered in London and DXP-604, which is undergoing clinical trials in China and was developed by BeiGene and Singlomics, both based in Beijing. The publications have not yet been peer reviewed, but some of the companies that manufacture antibody therapies already concede that their products have lower potency against Omicron than against other variants. But a slew of publications posted on preprint servers report laboratory evidence that Omicron is totally or partially resistant to all currently available treatments based on these monoclonal antibodies. Strained hospitals bracing for a COVID-19 surge caused by the quickly spreading Omicron variant could face another grim possibility: preliminary experiments suggest that most of the antibody treatments for the disease are powerless against Omicron 1, 2, 3, 4.ĭoctors use artificial versions of natural antibodies to stave off severe COVID-19 in high-risk people who are infected with the coronavirus. A nurse in Boston, Massachusetts, gives a dose of the monoclonal antibody bamlanivimab to a man with COVID-19.

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