The drug can be used to treat patients who are receiving systemic corticosteroids and require supplemental oxygen, non-invasive or invasive mechanical ventilation, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, the FDA said, adding studies showed Actemra helped reduce the risk of death and speed recovery.
For months already, the medicine has been given to severely ill COVID-19 patients on a compassionate-use basis, generating hundreds of millions in sales for Roche.

Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a single mutation gives SARS-CoV-2 the ability to enter cells through another route – one that does not require ACE2. The ability to use an alternative entry pathway opens up the possibility of evading COVID-19 antibodies or vaccines, but the researchers did not find evidence of such evasion. However, the discovery does show that the virus can change in unexpected ways and find new ways to cause infection. The study is published in the journal Cell Reports.

“However, even beyond four weeks, a single vaccine dose does not eliminate infection risk, highlighting the continued importance of non-pharmaceutical measures to control transmission within long-term care facilities,” said Madhumita Shrotri and Laura Shallcross, from the UCL Institute of Health Informatics.

The study will be critical to inform policy decisions regarding revaccination schedules in this vulnerable population and the disease control measures needed in the short, medium, and long term to protect long-term care facilities from future waves of SARS-CoV-2 infection, the team said.