Gov. Abbott: Texas Gets First COVID-19 Treatment, Same Therapeutic President Trump Received
LUBBOCK, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) - Texas has received the first medical treatment designed for COVID-19, which will be distributed throughout the state, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday.
Abbott made the announcement in Lubbock as areas of West Texas, especially El Paso, have seen continued surges of the virus. The governor said the treatment is "good news" for frontline workers who have been dealing with increased hospitalizations.
The treatment is a monoclonal antibody therapy from Eli Lilly, which Abbott said is like the treatment President Donald Trump received when he had COVID-19.
"It's best use is for the early stage of COVID cases, in patients who are in the early iterations of COVID-19," Abbott said. "And the goal is to give it to them at such an early date that it will keep them out of hospitals and that will be one of the strategies used to make sure we are able to reduce hospitalizations."
Charts shown by the governor described how the treatment is provided. Abbott said the therapeutic is a liquid in a bag that will be infused into a patient and that the process would take an hour.
Lubbock has already received its allocation of the treatment and that allocations will be added on a weekly basis, Abbott said.
Abbott said the state is anticipating more treatments to become available and for at least two vaccines to be approved in December.
Texas was the first state in the U.S. to cross one million COVID-19 cases last week. As of Thursday afternoon, the state has seen a total of 1,048,383 cases and 19,883 deaths.
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