China's drug regulator has granted emergency permission for the country's first specific COVID-19 medication, which has been shown in clinical trials to drastically reduce hospitalizations and fatalities in high-risk patients.
The move comes as health officials worldwide give therapies the green light - notably for high-risk individuals - despite reservations about the new Omicron type.
China's National Medical Products Administration announced Wednesday that it had granted "emergency authorization" for a monoclonal antibody treatment.
Monoclonal antibodies are proteins that have been engineered to recognize a particular target. In the case of COVID-19, the target will be the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which the virus uses to infiltrate human cells.
Brii said in a statement on Thursday that the combination of BRII-196/BRII-198 demonstrated an 80% reduction in hospitalization and mortality in non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients at high risk of developing severe disease, based on final data from a Phase III clinical trial.
The treatment involves the administration of two medications through injection and can be used to treat specific conditions that are at danger of worsening, China's National Medical Products Administration said.
It was developed in collaboration with Tsinghua University, Shenzhen's Third People's Hospital, and Brii Biosciences.
Based on a recent official media article, the medication has also been utilized on individuals infected during local flare-ups.
China is the latest country to approve identical COVID-19 therapies, with British regulators authorizing one last week.
British health officials have also given the go signal for pills for emergency usage - these are antiviral drugs that reduce the virus's ability to multiply within the body.
While pills are more convenient to deliver, the most effective treatment for COVID-19 at the moment is monoclonal antibodies taken through a drip.
China also possesses a number of conditionally licensed vaccinations, but their published efficacy rates trail those of competing vaccines developed in other countries.
A research published last month by Hong Kong's Chinese University indicated that patients vaccinated with the BioNTech vaccine had much greater antibody levels compared to those vaccinated with China's Sinovac, corroborated by two other studies conducted in Hong Kong and on the mainland.
The study did discover that in Sinovac patients, the T-cell response - white blood cells that remember how to fight disease - remained robust.
Hong Kong has begun urging citizens who received Sinovac jabs to receive a third booster to increase their protection levels.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the emergency use of AstraZeneca's Evusheld to protect individuals against the contagious disease.
