“Those who are immunocompromised or immunosuppressed have never left lockdown.”
Daisy Cooper MP has been pressing the Government to buy stocks of a drug that would help protect immune suppressed people from suffering with COVID-19.
In a clinical trial in adults, the drug named Evusheld was found to reduce the risk of developing symptomatic Covid-19 by 77%, with protection from the virus continuing for at least six months following a single dose.
Last week in Parliament, Daisy spoke in a debate to highlight the plight of immune compromised people, and urged the Government to buy the drug.
She said: “Those who are immunocompromised or immunosuppressed have never left lockdown. They can’t benefit from the vaccines that the rest of us have enjoyed. It is a huge health inequality in our country that all of us can benefit from vaccines but those who cannot are not being given access to this life-saving drug.”
She added that the Government needs to act quickly to buy the drug, as following its approval from the European Medicines Agency, the window within which there is still manufacturing capacity and the UK can place an order is shrinking fast.
These concerns were also laid out in a letter that Daisy wrote to the health minister, in which she reiterated the urgency with which the government should buy stocks of Evusheld.
Fiona Loud, policy director of Kidney Care UK and also a St Albans resident, said: “We were encouraged by the first approval of Evusheld, and yet disheartened by the fact that it is still not yet available in the UK.
“With the current very high rates of Covid-19 infection, the withdrawal of free testing and infection control measures, anxiety is rising again particularly in groups who are more likely to catch Covid-19 and more likely to die if they do so.
“People with kidney disease continue to be at high risk from Covid-19 because of their immunosuppression or their condition and are keen to get all the protection they can, so effective preventative treatments are needed now to support them if they are to feel safe and be able to live with Covid-19.”