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Which treatments are being withdrawn?
The tables below outline which treatments are now going to be available on the NHS to patients following NICE’s decision this week, and which treatments will be withdrawn.
In the community (non-hospital) setting, for the treatment of immunocompromised people with mild COVID-19, access to molnupiravir and remdesivir will be withdrawn. This means that paxlovid will continue to be available, as will sotrovimab for those who are unsuitable for paxlovid. NICE also looked at two treatments which weren’t previously approved in this setting, tixagevimab plus cilgavimab (Evusheld) and casirivimab plus imdevimab, but decided not to recommend these for NHS use.
In the hospital setting, the treatments remdesivir and casirivimab plus imdevimab were being used to treat patients with more serious COVID-19, but NICE has decided to withdraw access to both of these treatments. Instead, NHS clinicians who are treating patients in hospital with supplemental oxygen will now have access to tocilizumab and baricitinib. There have been no additional treatments recommended or removed for those in hospital without oxygen.
It is worth noting that some standard hospital treatments which weren’t looked at by NICE in this appraisal, such as dexamethasone, will still be available.
We understand that access to the current COVID-19 treatments will be removed from the point of final guidance being published. The exact timeline is not yet available. We will update this blog if and when we have more information.