The Food and Drug Administration has withdrawn its provisional support for the use of Evusheld, a medication that was once a valuable tool for preventing patients with weakened immune systems from becoming severely ill with COVID-19.
With new viral variants increasingly adept at defeating Evusheld, the FDA said the biological drug should no longer be used.
The FDA decision marks the end — at least for now — of a medication that had helped restore some normalcy to the lives of cancer patients, transplant recipients and others who either could not be vaccinated against COVID-19 or whose immune systems failed to make a good response to vaccine. As many as 3% of the U.S. population — 7.2 million adults — is thought to have immune deficiencies that put them at risk of becoming severely ill or dying if they are infected with the pandemic virus.
