Australian virologists have uncovered a drug-resis

Australian virologists have uncovered a drug-resistant mutation in the Covid-19 virus associated with the drug sotrovimab and say without the monitoring of patients given the treatment the mutated virus could spread in the community.

The world-first findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday, are the result of an analysis of the first 100 patients in western Sydney during the Delta outbreak in 2021 to be given sotrovimab.

Sotrovimab is a monoclonal antibody that is available in many countries to treat vulnerable patients who are at risk of severe disease and death due to Covid-19 infection. Sotrovimab must be administered via infusion within the first five days of Covid-19 infection, and prevents Covid-19 symptoms from becoming severe. It is one of the few human-engineered monoclonal antibodies that can target Omicron.

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The lead author of the study, Dr Rebecca Rockett, said four of the patients developed resistance to sotrovimab six to 13 days after treatment. The whole genome sequence of the virus analysed from the patients before and after sotrovimab treatment uncovered mutations in a few patients that “made the drug effectively inactive,” Rockett, from the University of Sydney’s Institute for Infectious Diseases, said.