Germany buys 'passive vaccine' antibody drug that helped Donald Trump's Covid-19 recovery

Pioneering antiviral cocktail awaiting approval from European regulators

In this undated image from video provided by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020, scientists work with a bioreactor at a company facility in New York state, for efforts on an experimental coronavirus antibody drug. The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020 authorized the use of the Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. drug to try to prevent patients with mild-to-moderate disease from worsening and needing hospitalization. It's given as a one-time treatment through an IV and is still going through more testing to establish its safety and effectiveness.  (Regeneron via AP)
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Germany will become the first EU country to use a pioneering antibody treatment credited with helping Donald Trump recover from Covid-19.

Two different kinds of the so-called monoclonal antibody therapy will be available in the country's hospitals from next week, according to health minister Jens Spahn.

"The government has bought 200,000 doses for €400 million ($486m)," Mr Spahn told the Bild newspaper on Sunday.

Patients will receive the doses free of charge and Mr Spahn said Germany will be "the first country in the EU" to deploy them in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Both treatments – produced by Regeneron and Eli Lily – are approved for emergency use in the US but have yet to be authorised by European regulators.

Germany's medicine regulator the Paul Ehrlich Institute said that use of the drugs was "in principle" allowed on a case-by-case basis to prevent "severe illness or hospitalisations among certain risk groups".

Mr Trump, who was taken to hospital with Covid-19 last October while he was US president, was treated with Regeneron's drug before it was officially authorised. He said the medicine did "a fantastic job".

Regeneron's version is a combination or "cocktail" of two lab-made antibodies: infection-fighting proteins that were developed to bind to the surface protein of the coronavirus to stop it from invading human cells. Eli Lilly's therapy is similar but uses a single synthetic antibody.

"They work like a passive vaccination. Administering these antibodies in the early stages can help high-risk patients avoid a more serious progression," Mr Spahn said.

Germany's decision to use the drugs before they are approved by the European Medicines Agency comes at a time of growing frustration over a slower-than-expected vaccine campaign across the EU.

Vaccine makers Pfizer (in association with BioNTech) and AstraZeneca (in partnership with Oxford University) said they would be delivering fewer doses to Europe than anticipated in the short term because of production problems.

The German government said it expects to vaccinate everyone in the country by the end of August.

Although Germany, the EU's most populous nation and its biggest economy, coped relatively well with the first coronavirus wave last spring, it has been hit hard by a resurgence.

The emergence of new, more transmissable strains has added to concerns, prompting the nation to tighten travel restrictions and step up border controls.

Federal police on Sunday were carrying out checks at Frankfurt and Munich airports to ensure passengers arriving from "high risk" countries could produce a valid, negative Covid-19 test and had complied with online registration requirements.

Germany has recorded more than two million cases since the start of the pandemic and more than 50,000 deaths.