Myron Cohen, MD, the Yeargan-Bate Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, and Epidemiology, was featured in a New York Times article about an unprecedented effort to stop the coronavirus in nursing homes.
Although nursing home residents make up just 1.2 percent of the United States population, they account for about 40 percent of Covid-19 deaths, the article reports, and an experimental nursing home drug trial is a monoclonal antibody, an artificially synthesized version of coronavirus antibodies produced by the body.
“Some people ask, ‘If we have a vaccine, why do this?’” said Dr. Myron Cohen, a University of North Carolina researcher who proposed the trial. “But a vaccine will take a month to produce antibodies, and some populations need a more emergent intervention.”
Monoclonal antibodies are recognized as “one of the great hopes in the war on the coronavirus.”
Read the article here.