Twice, Janet Handal thought she would get a reprieve from semi-lockdown life. The first was when she was vaccinated in January, 2021. But a negative antibody test quickly dashed those hopes; the same immunosuppressants she took to prevent her body from rejecting a kidney transplant also prevented it from responding adequately to vaccines.
So the 71-year-old New Yorker turned her attention to a drug, then in clinical trials, designed to protect immunocompromised people like her, enriching their blood with antibodies they struggled to make on their own. Evusheld was authorized last Dec. 8 — six days before lab data showed it would be significantly less effective against Omicron, the immune-evasive variant about to sweep the globe.
Since then, Handal and the roughly 200,000 other Americans to receive Evusheld have had to recalibrate their hopes. Although the Food and Drug Administration doubled the recommended dose to compensate, and the drug — when given along with the full complement of vaccines — still offers protection against severe disease, gone are hopes that the most vulnerable could ditch masks or return to their pre-Covid lives.
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