Covid treatments in the UK - clinical guide

[bennevisplace]

Some recent contributors e.g. healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo... have highlighted ongoing issues with getting early access to treatments after being diagnosed with Covid, even though every CLL patient is defined as being at "greatest risk of adverse outcome following COVID-19".

If you find yourself being refused access to antiviral or monoclonal antibody treatments for spurious reasons like:

- your CLL is in early stage

- you are in remission

- your symptoms began 6 days ago

- your symptoms are not (yet) severe enough

you might like to refer the person standing in your way, or their controller, to the current Clinical Commissioning Policy england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/... wherein:

"Consider access to this clinical pathway for patients under the following conditions:

- Onset of symptoms of COVID-19 within the last 5 days (for nirmatrelvir/ritonavir1, sotrovimab and molnupiravir) or 7 days (for remdesivir), remains symptomatic and with no signs of clinical recovery

- SARS-CoV-2 infection is confirmed by either lateral flow test or PCR (registered via gov.uk or NHS 119)

- The patient is a member of a "highest" risk group (as defined in the Department of Health and Social Care commissioned Independent Advisory Group report)

- The patient is not hospitalised for COVID-19 and is not requiring new supplemental oxygen specifically for the management of COVID-19 symptoms"

The definitions of highest risk groups are given in gov.uk/government/publicati... and include

"all people who... are diagnosed with: ...chronic B-cell lymphoproliferative disorders (chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, follicular lymphoma)"

These reference documents are effective from 13 June 2022, per england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/... in England and similar letters in the devolved adminstrations.

[Jm954 Administrator]

An excellent resource bennevisplace , thank you

Jackie

[JigFettler Volunteer]

Proper job!

Thank you!

Jig

[CLLerinOz Administrator Volunteer]

Thanks! I've just added this to the pinned post re Covid.

[annmcgowan]

ThNj you for this, very useful.Ann

[Fran57]

Thanks so much.I hope we won’t need to refer to it, but….

Stay safe,

Fran 😷

[RogerPinner]

Thanks, endorsing the previous replies. Roger

[craigydon]

Thank you so much for this. The timing is perfect as my husband, who is undergoing treatment for CLL, tested positive yesterday evening and we are battling to get anti viral drugs. He isn’t feeling great, night sweat last night and the continuous cough. He has 3 months left to go on venetoclax.

This forum is amazing. Thanks to all.

[bennevisplace in reply to craigydon]

Best of luck, keep us posted.

[Pearlpink]

Thank you! So useful!

[Peggy4]

Thank you. I can find no such equivalent for Wales unless this is ok for both.Peggy

[bennevisplace in reply to Peggy4]

I think these three documents apply UK-wide Peggy. Although I found two of them on NHS England website, the Clinical Commissioning Policy flowchart is headed UK... , the definitions are off gov.uk, and the last document features the "letterheads" of all four nations.

[Peggy4 in reply to bennevisplace]

Thank you 👍

[hopefulbunny]

Thank you, very useful.

[bennevisplace]

Worth noting here: a finding of the Birmingham University study of immune responses to COVID vaccination in CLL patients (16 lines from the end) healthunlocked.com/redirect...

After monoclonal antibody treatments became available in the UK in December 2021, only 35 percent of the study participants with confirmed COVID obtained such treatments. At this time all CLL patients were defined as being at high risk of progressing to severe COVID and eligible for the new treatments at an early stage after a positive PCR test.