AstraZeneca sends updated Covid drug Evusheld to regulators for approval

A new version of a drug that protects vulnerable patients at risk of death from Covid-19 could be available within months, The Mail on Sunday has learned.

Last week the NHS spending watchdog, the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), rejected the treatment, Evusheld, for people who don’t respond to Covid vaccines. It ruled that the latest evidence suggests it is no longer effective against current Covid variants.

An estimated 500,000 Britons are believed to still be at serious risk from infection with Covid because of conditions that weaken their immune system and make the vaccines ineffective.

However, Astrazeneca, the developer of Evusheld, is already administering an updated version to UK trial participants and is confident it will be proved it can combat all known Covid forms.

Insiders speaking to the MoS said that, in lab studies, the drug, dubbed Evusheld Two, triggered the vital protective proteins.

NHS spending watchdogs pulled funding for treating vulnerable patients with Evusheld when it was proved the original drug was no longer effective against Covid-19

Clinical trials have shown the updated formula is 88 per cent effective in vulnerable patients 

A number of clinically vulnerable Britons have already been given Evusheld Two at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. The trial is still recruiting in London, Nottingham and Oxford.

‘We hope we can make Evusheld Two available in the UK by the second half of the year,’ the source revealed.

Evusheld is a monoclonal antibody drug, which means it works by attaching itself to the Covid virus to stop it from binding with healthy cells in the body.

When Evusheld was first approved for UK use in March 2022, studies showed it could reduce the risk of Covid infection by 88 per cent in vulnerable patients, such as those with blood cancer or who have had organ transplants that require taking immune-system-suppressing drugs to reduce the risk of rejection.

However, it took NHS bosses nearly a year to decide whether it would purchase Evusheld, by which point new variants arrived, rendering it ineffective.

Following NICE’s decision not to acquire Evusheld, it said that it would speed up the review of Covid drugs in future.

‘Covid is still an ongoing threat for thousands of Britons,’ says Fiona Loud, policy director at the charity Kidney Care UK. ‘We need to make sure the same mistakes are not repeated when Evusheld Two arrives.’