The Importance of Reframing COVID-19 as a Preventable Event

While the general public may view the COVID-19 pandemic as a thing of the past, the virus continues to impact a significant number of people each year. Worse yet, many people who get sick with COVID find themselves facing long-term impacts, even after the initial sickness has passed.

Pharmaceutical Executive spoke with Florin Draica, senior vice president of US medical affairs at Shionogi, about the status of the disease and how new treatment methods are still being developed, such as XOCOVA. The FDA-approved medication is designed to be taken after exposure to the virus but before symptoms set in, in order to prevent serious illness.

Dr. Draica spoke about the ongoing impact of COVID, along with the industry’s broader need to start pursuing preventative medicines more often. By doing this, the public health playbook could focus on preventing illness while also treating people who still get sick.

Pharmaceutical Executive: What is the importance of reframing COVID-19 as a preventable event?
Dr. Florin Draica: Let’s start by talking about where we are with COVID-19 today. We tend to look at the disease in retrospect and compare it to what it was in 2020 or 2021 — and we are well beyond that phase. But it is important to recognize that COVID-19 continues to affect millions of Americans every year.

People are still being hospitalized, and an increasingly important area of emerging evidence involves the lasting impact of COVID-19 beyond the initial infection. Multiple studies have shown that people diagnosed with COVID-19 experience increased rates of new-onset conditions, or worsening of existing conditions, across neurologic, cardiovascular, respiratory, and chronic kidney disease categories — and this persists throughout the year following infection.

COVID-19 activity also continues to rise during predictable periods, including summer and winter. The disease remains highly transmissible: up to approximately half of people living with an infected individual will go on to develop COVID-19 themselves.

While vaccination remains critical for prevention, it does not always prevent infection completely. Vaccine effectiveness is also reduced in people with certain conditions, particularly those with impaired immunity, and protection wanes over time.

This creates an important gap — the window between the moment someone is exposed to an infected person and the point at which they develop symptoms. That post-exposure window is where post-exposure prophylaxis comes in, and it is where XOCOVA can play a role in helping to prevent COVID-19 from developing in the first place.