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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government may not have adopted much from Donald Trump, but the treatment the former US president received when he was diagnosed with Covid-19 last year seems to have caught his eye.
Germany has bought 200,000 doses of monoclonal antibody drugs for $ 487 million, and next week the country will be the first in the European Union to use it, Health Minister Jens Spahn told Sunday’s tabloid Bild.
Injecting these antibodies can help prevent patients at risk in the early stages of developing a serious condition, he said. The German Ministry of Health did not immediately respond to a request for comments from Bloomberg.
Trump received experimental treatment from Regeneron Pharmaceutical Inc. in October after being diagnosed with Covid-19. The then president was so impressed that he said he wanted to succeed available free of charge to the Americans, which ultimately did not happen. At least some of the doses ordered by Germany also come from Regeneron, according to DPA newswire.
Spahn, one of Merkel’s possible successors, has recently come under political pressure over the slow launch of Germany’s vaccination program in Germany. According to the Robert Koch Institute, 1.63 million Germans have been vaccinated so far, which is less than 2% of the country’s total population.