Last October, Donald Trump was still President of the United States and sick with Covid-19.
During his stay in the hospital, the tenant of the White House had received an experimental treatment based on monoclonal antibodies.
A cure that Trump had called "blessing from God" on his release from Walter Reed Military Medical Center, where he had been treated.
Before God, it was American pharmaceutical companies that leaned over the president's hospital bed.
Shortly after Donald Trump's hospitalization, the American authorities urgently authorized the arrival on the market of two treatments based on monoclonal antibodies.
One produced by Regeneron which combines two synthetic antibodies, the other manufactured by the Lilly laboratory which uses only one antibody.
These antibodies, injected intravenously into patients with the disease, will cling to the virus and prevent it from attaching to and entering human cells.
As a result, the viral load drops rapidly and patients at risk will not develop severe forms of the disease.
Gregory, who is diabetic, received this treatment in an American hospital in Alabama: “My chest was tight, a lot of fever.
When I was offered to benefit from this experimental treatment, I said “yes” right away.
"And according to our witness, the benefits of the monoclonal antibody infusion were rapid" 96 hours later, I no longer had any symptoms.
I was just a little tired ”.
Matthew Anserd, the doctor who treated Grégory treated 350 patients with monoclonal antibodies, believes in the effectiveness of the remedy: “We have reduced the number of hospitalizations.
Out of the hundreds of people I have treated with this treatment, none have died from the coronavirus or have triggered an allergic reaction, ”says the practitioner from Athens Limestone Hospital.
"I will recommend it to my parents" smiles the doctor.
Yves Coppieters, epidemiologist and professor of public health at the ULB, sees in monoclonal antibodies a hope in the large-scale treatment of the coronavirus: “It is a very promising therapy if it is administered very early in the disease.
We can imagine deploying it in nursing homes at the slightest alert ”.
A preventive treatment that combined with vaccination could change the situation: "If we have a panel of treatments available, including these antivirals, we can basically live with the virus," says the specialist.
In Europe, the European Medicines Agency has not yet delivered its verdict on the use of this protocol.
But already Italy and Germany have decided to take the lead.
Rome has authorized the deployment of the treatment on its territory and Berlin has ordered 200,000 doses of the treatment developed by Regeneron.
In France, monoclonal antibodies could soon join the Discovery clinical trial.
Before being perhaps deployed in hospitals across the country.
