Category: COVID-19

KU health experts praise COVID-19 symptom-reducing antibody treatment, study efforts

by Noah Taborda, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — After she contracted COVID-19, Amber Stiles says, a monoclonal antibody treatment study she participated in helped minimize the draining effects of the virus.

The therapy is an infusion of mass-produced antibodies, like those a person’s body makes in response to infection. The goal of monoclonal treatment is to prevent hospitalizations, reduce viral loads and lessen symptom severity.

Styles, senior director of regulatory compliance and risk management at the University of Kansas Health System, quickly contacted the administrator of a monoclonal antibody study at the health system after receiving her positive test result. By the time she received the infusion, she was already losing her sense of taste and smell and was feeling very fatigued.

The treatment helped turn the tide in her bout with the virus, Styles said.

“My COVID journey was pretty short compared to others,” Styles said. “When you contract COVID you literally sit there waiting for something to happen … so I felt really blessed to be able to participate in the study, and I felt better within a few days.”

Monoclonal antibody infusion treatments have been authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration for almost one year. They are intended to target high-risk individuals or those with a variety of symptoms.

When KU Health System launched the antibody study almost a year ago, Amber was one of the first patients to participate, said Mario Castro, vice chair for clinical and translational research. He said this treatment is familiar to medical staff and can be used in patients with conditions ranging from arthritis to asthma to organ transplants.

While the therapy has not been given full authorization, Castro was encouraged by early data. He urged those who are in the early days of COVID-19 symptoms to reach out about potentially undergoing this treatment.

“The FDA wants to see thousands and thousands of patients’ data being tracked in a period of observation time to see what the long-term side effects are from these, and we’re not there yet,” Castro said. “The data has not been really accumulated and cleaned up for the FDA to really decide when to give it full approval, but we’re treating patients with this every day.”

Castro and his teams are also reviewing other potential treatments to cut down on COVID-19 symptom severity.

While these methods may provide benefits for those infected, medical professionals at KU Health System emphasize that vaccines are the optimal way to prevent and reduce spread of the virus.

“These vaccines are really made to prevent hospitalization and death,” said Dana Hawkinson medical director of infection prevention and control at KU Health System. “I think the bulk of the data we have continues to stay at 85 plus or more efficacy, protecting against hospitalization, severe disease and death, and that is for all age groups.”

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2021/10/09/ku-health-experts-praise-covid-19-symptom-reducing-antibody-treatment-study-efforts/

Kansas lawmakers want to challenge a COVID-19 vaccine policy that doesn’t exist yet

by Abigail Censky, KCUR and Kansas News Service

Republicans in Kansas are intent on pushing back against a forthcoming federal vaccine policy for private employers. The only problem? It isn’t written yet. But the politics of a non-existent policy are benefiting both sides.

Kansas Republicans opposing COVID-19 vaccine requirements are pushing ahead with an effort to sidestep a federal vaccine mandate that hasn’t yet been written. GOP members in the Legislature created a special committee to look for ways to fight President Joe Biden’s proposed policy, which they see as an egregious overreach of government.

“I hope that it will open some eyes in the community,” said state Sen. Mike Thompson, a former meteorologist who circulated misinformation and cast doubt on the efficacy of vaccines and masks throughout the pandemic.

“We’ve got a lot of folks who are reaching out to us,” he said, “begging us for help.”

It’s the latest move by Republicans to challenge public health policies aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus as the state comes down from a summer surge in cases fueled by the delta variant. The new committee was formed the day Gov. Laura Kelly ordered flags be flown half-staff in honor of the 6,024 Kansans who’ve died of COVID-19 and before the final federal policy has been published.

In the coming weeks, the nine Republicans will likely overpower the committee’s three, not yet appointed, Democrats to determine if it’s possible to thwart an impending federal vaccine mandate.

Republicans in the state’s congressional delegation are also mounting several legislative challenges, and the state’s Republican attorney general has sworn he’ll challenge the policy. However, there’s one very large problem: the fine print of the policy mandating employers with more than 100 employees to require vaccinations or regular testing doesn’t exist yet.

Some lawmakers wanted a special session to fight the mandate, but Republican Senate President Ty Masterson said it might be premature.

“Even if there were a special session, what we would do is we would have a committee meeting hearings, right?” he said when lawmakers formed the committee.

A special legislative session could cost Kansas taxpayers up to $65,000 dollars a day.

“It’s a little bit of cart and the horse,” Masterson said of calling lawmakers back to Topeka when there are still questions surrounding what the policy will look like.


“All of that’s a little bit up in the air right now,” said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer with the Association of State and Territorial Health Professionals.

“If this is framed as what we call a preemptive policy,” he said, “then states may be very limited in being able to do any laws of their own about this.”

Only one state, Montana, bans private employers from requiring employees to be vaccinated, and a Montana legal firm is currently challenging the law. Similar legislation in Kansas failed to pass the state Senate earlier this year.

According to the National Academy for State Health Policy, vaccination mandates for state workers are banned in eight states, but state employees are required to be vaccinated in 19 states.

The uncertainty about the vaccine mandate hasn’t stopped Kansas Republicans in Washington from producing a flurry of legislation ahead of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration publishing its emergency temporary standard.

Sen. Roger Marshall introduced an amendment, which failed along party lines, attempting to block the government from using any federal funds to enforce COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Rep. Tracey Mann also introduced a bill attempting to block OSHA from creating any temporary emergency standards around vaccines, and Rep. Ron Estes has announced he plans to introduce a bill to guarantee religious exemptions under the emergency standard.

Mann and Estes have also signed onto a letter urging Biden to drop the policy. Attorneys general in 24 states, including Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, also vowed to challenge the policy once it’s written.

Yet congressional Republicans may be bound by the same constraints as state lawmakers if the federal policy is written to prevent loopholes. The administration could also be slow walking the rolling out of an official policy while companies begin to take action.

“That could be part of the tactic,” Plescia said, “just stall the implementation for so long that, by the time it clears, the time to do this has passed.”

As an example, the new CEO of Cerner Corp., David Feinberg, instituted a vaccine mandate for the Kansas City area’s largest private employer in early October.

Retired labor attorney Charles Gordon posited in the Wall Street Journal that a policy that never arrives, “may prove more useful as a Sword of Damocles than a real requirement.”

The very idea of challenging the policy is also politically expedient for Republicans. Polling from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicates a majority of Americans support Biden’s potential vaccine mandate or regular testing for private employers, but 6 in 10 Republicans oppose the policy.

Plescia is worried in states like Kansas, the Legislature could threaten long-standing public health policies. A challenge to COVID-19 mandates could open Pandora’s box, weakening popular public health rules like child vaccination requirements in schools or other public health policies.

“From what we’ve seen recently with a lot of other curtailing of public health powers,” Plescia said, “we are concerned about this. It could be the thin edge of a wedge in some states.”

Jim McLean of the Kansas News Service contributed to this story.
Abigail Censky is the political reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can follow her on Twitter @AbigailCensky or email her at abigailcensky (at) kcur (dot) org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.
See more at https://www.kcur.org/news/2021-10-07/kansas-lawmakers-want-to-challenge-a-covid-19-vaccine-policy-that-doesnt-exist-yet

Kansas hospitals see off-season surge of RSV cases, sickening children and straining system

by Julie Freijat, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — In late August, Kansas City resident Victoria Biggs’ 4-month-old daughter, Kinsley, came down with what she thought were allergies.

When the runny nose and congestion hung around longer than expected, Biggs took her to the doctor. Kinsley was almost immediately diagnosed with respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

Kinsely’s case was mild, Biggs said, and she was able to treat it with at-home remedies. Kinsley was on the mend after a couple of weeks. A new mom, Biggs said she knew about RSV, but didn’t know it was surging in Kansas.

The highly contagious RSV is usually a winter virus, which means Kansas doctors typically see fewer cases over the summer. This year, however, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows state cases of RSV in Kansas took off in August.

Stephanie Kuhlmann, a pediatric hospitalist at Wesley Children’s Hospital in Wichita, said the unexpected influx of RSV cases has taxed the hospital system.

“We’re dealing with such severe staffing shortages, nurse staffing issues and respiratory therapy staffing shortages due to the pandemic,” Kuhlmann said. “Having a bunch of kids now with RSV is just kind of straining some of our hospital resources.”

Usually, RSV is easy to predict, she said. Because the summer surge was unexpected, doctors couldn’t plan for the waves of cases.

Mike Lewis, a pediatrician at the University of Kansas Health System who oversees the pediatric intensive care unit, noted the usual predictability of the virus and said during a typical RSV season, there’s a three- to four-week spike in cases before a decline.

“In the summer, you might see an occasional RSV kid, but nowhere even remotely close to this,” Lewis said. “On top of that, this last winter, RSV and flu were fairly nonexistent. There were occasional cases. And that’s not just here locally, this is across the country as well.”

The low flu activity was likely due to COVID-19 mitigation efforts. Those were also probably responsible for the quiet RSV season, Kuhlmann said. When mitigation efforts relaxed, RSV cases rose.

“I know pediatricians’ clinics have really struggled to keep up, because on top of all of the RSV the summer’s a very busy time for pediatricians in the outpatient setting,” Lewis said. “We have a lot of kids who are having their kind of once-a-year visit to go back to school.”

RSV typically presents as a cold, with symptoms including a runny nose and fever. However, the virus can cause respiratory complications in younger and older patients. On average, RSV is responsible for about 58,000 hospitalizations in children under 5 in the United States.

Kuhlmann said there have been a few COVID-19 pediatric cases at the hospital over the last few weeks, though the big effects come from the strain on resources.

“The hospital I work in serves both adult patients and pediatric patients, and so when you have a high percentage of … those resources being taken up by adult COVID patients, that certainly uses up the resources that we need also for a busy pediatric unit,” she said.

In late August, Kansas hospitals were nearing capacity or had already reached it because of a COVID-19 spike.

Wesley has spent time in the past few weeks on transfer closure, which means it couldn’t take patients from referring areas. Kuhlmann also indicated they have spent some time on diversion, meaning they couldn’t take patients locally and could only treat emergency room cases.

“A lot of that is (because) some days we’re at capacity running all our beds due to RSV and other related illnesses,” she said. “Sometimes it’s (because) we’re at capacity from just nursing shortages.”

Lewis said many people wonder if there will be another spike in RSV later this year, and if so, how hospital systems would cope.

“There’ve been many sleepless nights amongst pediatric hospital-based doctors trying to find one place to take a kid,” he said. “We’ve had to take kids from Wichita, which has a very robust pediatric hospital-based system.”

In August, the University of Kansas Health System saw 48 positive RSV tests and 14 RSV admissions. In the past two weeks, Lewis said, providers have seen a slight downward trend in cases.

Kuhlmann said while she saw cases drop two or three weeks ago, they rose again in the past week.

There is no vaccine for RSV, though that could change. The Alliance for Multispecialty Research is running clinical research studies on a potential RSV vaccine across the United States, with one location testing in Kansas City.

The virus is very contagious and spread through respiratory droplets, Kuhlmann said, so frequently disinfecting surfaces helps diminish the risk of contracting the virus.

“Certainly keeping kids home and adults staying home when they’re sick and not feeling well will help prevent” RSV, she said. “It’s the same as any of the other COVID mitigation factors with masking, distancing (and) hand washing.”

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2021/10/06/kansas-hospitals-see-off-season-surge-of-rsv-cases-sickening-children-and-straining-system/.