Fewer than 10 people in Saskatchewan who contracted COVID-19 received monoclonal antibody treatment.
At a Provincial Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) technical briefing on Tuesday, Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) Executive Director Scott Livingstone told reporters that the health authority treated so few people because there are fewer eligible patients.
As more people were vaccinated, Livingstone said, fewer people were able to receive the treatment, although he admitted that the health authority had planned to treat more patients with it.
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“When you set up these (monoclonal therapy) clinics and the potential of the clinics, we were seeing a number of cases of about 500 per day,” he said.
“Those have drastically decreased, and as a result, that automatically alienates people from whom they would qualify. So right now, we’re targeting five or seven treatments a day, but we haven’t hit those numbers yet. “
Healthcare workers use monoclonal antibodies to treat COVID-19 patients who are not vaccinated or immunosuppressed before they need to visit an ICU.
The treatment became available to Saskatchewan residents about a week ago. Livingstone said two clinics are currently treating patients in Saskatoon and Regina and he hoped to expand the practice.
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The province’s director of medical health, Dr. Saqib Shahab, said the practice was only designed for “a specific and limited role.”
“I will emphasize that the pillar of prevention at this time is vaccination,” he added.
Global News asked if it was worth having SHA staff in monoclonal therapy clinics when the health authority has reassigned workers from other areas, limiting services.
Livingstone said the child psychologists that the SHA reassigned if not will continue to examine all opportunities to reduce some of the more serious impacts the virus has on our healthcare system going forward.
Livingstone said the health authority sought to exhaust all options regarding COVID-19.
Reference-globalnews.ca