Poor Messaging Puts Lives at Risk

Simple, direct communications are critical in a crisis. It’s part of a leader’s duty of care, yet as we approach the end of the coronavirus pandemic’s third year, the leaders of our medical response are still failing this basic test.

One example is a failure to warn people who have poorly functioning immune systems—about 7 million in the U.S.—that a medicine called Evusheld that’s supposed to protect them from COVID-19 infections is less effective (sometimes useless) against variants of the virus now causing most new infections.

Since early November, more than half of new Covid-19 infections were caused by variants that elude Evusheld, and government health officials have quietly acknowledged that for more than a month. People who rely on Evusheld may need to consider extra steps to protect themselves, such as avoiding crowds or regularly wearing N95-equivalent masks.

“I’m worried that there is a significant group of people who are unaware of how things have changed,” Dr. Brian Koffman told CNN. Koffman is chief medical officer of the CLL Society, which serves people with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Another advocate for the immune-compromised, Janet Handal, told CNN that health officials “aren’t taking seriously their responsibility as public health officials to communicate to the immune-compromised.”

Handal, president and co-founder of the Transplant Recipients and Immunocompromised Patient Advocacy Group, said, “This is a perfect storm: The holidays are upon us and people will travel and want to be together and they won’t realize that they’re not protected by their Evusheld.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website briefly mentions that Evusheld has become less protective. CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha both briefly mentioned that new variants have diminished Evusheld’s efficacy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration posted information about the drug’s declining effectiveness on both Twitter and Facebook. If some other medicine suddenly stopped working most of the time—let’s say birth control pills—health experts would be shouting it from the rooftops. It’s as if known risk mitigation options didn’t exist.

The mild warning for patients from the CDC said, “Evusheld remains protective, but may offer less protection against certain strains of the Omicron variant.”

“If I read this, my alarm bells would not go off,” Handal told CNN. “This is not something that a patient is going to read and say, ‘I’ve got to change my Christmas plans.’” She also criticized the CDC’s page for health care providers, saying it was needlessly complicated, such that many providers might risk misunderstanding the looming threat.

Also, there’s no coordinated outreach to the people who rely on Evusheld to protect themselves, and if they get a COVID-19 infection, many of them can’t take the antiviral drug Paxlovid, because of dangerous interactions with other drugs many of them must take. In New York and New Jersey, where nearly 70% of new COVID-19 infections are caused by variants that elude Evusheld, a CNN survey found just one of 10 hospital groups actively notifying Evusheld-reliant patients.

As has happened so often during this health crisis, getting information to the right people when they need it isn’t happening.

In the meantime, Attend Safe will continue working with our partners to utilize frequent testing as a way to keep people with infections (whether coronavirus, influenza or RSV) away from event sites, so that people who need to meet face-to-face can attend to life.