COVID-19 Mortality, Hospitalization Risk Higher in Patients With Blood Cancers

[EPguy]

We've discussed this often here. This is the latest from ASH 2021. Of interest:

<<Patients with MPN and plasma cell dyscrasia had less severe COVID-19 illness overall compared to patients with CLL, leukemia, MDS, or lymphoma.>>

pharmacytimes.com/view/covi...

[Mamab83]

In September I tested positive for covid - delta variant. Scared me to death. We stayed home for basically a year, got vaccinated and even kept our kids home schooled for half of 2020… this year we sent our kids back (All elementary age) and we got covid the first month of school 🤦🏼‍♀️

I’m 39, triple negative ET with platelets around 1.2 million. I called my hemo the day I tested positive and he got me in for regeneron. I’m thankful I had no complications from my experience! I would advise anyone who tests positive to get regeneron immediately and not wait though 💗

[EPguy in reply to Mamab83]

The new pill from Pfizer, Paxlovid, should be approved in US next few weeks. From my understanding it is signif more effective than the regeneron (~90% against bad outcomes) and is not an IV, rather an at home treatment. It's supposed to be a big deal in the pandemic. So anyone at risk who tests positive should check the status of this approval right away and discuss with your Dr.

We had Covid at the very start, Mar 2020, very ugly days. My MPN was cooking then but un-diagnosed. We both had long covid. It was hard to separate the long covid effect from the MPN. We're OK now covid wise.

Have you received the 3rd dose?

[Mamab83 in reply to EPguy]

No third dose for me. I received Johnson and Johnson so only had one dose and done. I will not be doing a booster bc of having covid and regeneron. I’m good for a while now

[EPguy in reply to Mamab83]

Sorry I was thinking of remdesivir, which is not so effective. The IV antibody treatments are quite good, although complex. But the new Pfizer pill will be also very good.

Note that the current antibody treatments do not reduce your odds of a future infection, only the effects of a current one. The happy exception are newer generation long acting antibody therapies. AZ has one. These may last for 6mo to a year and are great news for those of us on Rux or otherwise concerned about immunity.

<<AZ’s long-acting antibody combo shows benefit in COVID-19 trial >>

and it's a shot, not an IV, neat.

pharmatimes.com/news/azs_lo...

With Omicron you should research the info.

<<Regeneron Pharmaceuticals confirmed its Covid-19 antibody treatment loses potency against the new Omicron variant>>

barrons.com/articles/regene...

You do have "hybrid immunity" from the shot and the infection. But everything is different now with Omicron. Omicron prevention is weak for all shots without a booster/3rd dose, hence the big effort in UK to get boosters to all.