(Spirit Lake)– Lakes Regional Healthcare is among hospitals across the country administering two new medications for COVID-positive patients. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jeremy Bolluyt tells KUOO news they began administering the new medications in late November for emergency room and Lakes Regional Family Medicine patients…
“One of them doesn’t have a really a name brand yet but its generic name is Bamlanivimab and the other one is named Regeneron. They’re basically kind of Coke and Pepsi of the same type of medication. They’re antibodies, monoclonal antibodies, so they’re synthetic copies of antibodies like you would make yourself toward the disease whether you had it or became immunized. These two medicines are designed to be given to outpatients that would be at high risk for hospitalization and to try to avoid hospitalization in that subset of people whether it be older folks or even younger people with some high risk conditions.”
Dr. Bolluyt says the results so far have been good…
“Well we’ve given 12 doses of these meds so far. It’s about a two hour infusion and the medicine has been tolerated really well, and so far in the 12 doses we’ve given none of those folks have been in the hospital for covid, so it seems to be going well and it’s another tool in the box here to fight this disease that we’re dealing with.”
When it comes to COVID hospitalizations at Lakes Regional Healthcare, Dr. Bolluyt says they’re remaining pretty steady…
“We’re testing maybe a fewer people at our Test Iowa site. You know, certainly from a hospitalization stand point that hasn’t, I haven’t seen a decline in that yet. We’ve always had five to 12 or 13 people in our hospital that have been hospitalized primarily for a covid diagnosis. So that’s been holding pretty steady but you know, all of these treatments help and certainly the immunizations is on the horizon here and we’re already starting to make those plans and I think that’s really a big bright spot with this whole disease, that we’re all looking forward to start getting that out.”
And regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, Dr. Bolluyt says they’re expecting the first 200 to 300 doses to arrive at Lakes Regional by the end of the month…
“I think that we’ll be immunizing people here through the spring, probably. You know the immunization just, again, another emergency use drug which we haven’t seen a lot of those in my career but we’ve certainly seen several with covid. You know it really hasn’t been studied in kids yet and so I see that happening in the near future, too, in that we start to approve that for all of our populations. But I think it will start to make a big difference and it will certainly help in our healthcare centers both clinics and nursing homes and our hospital as far as trying to keep staff from getting ill and at least help our staffing situation, so.”
Healthcare providers and those in long term care facilities will be among the first to get vaccinated.
