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Bloomsburg pharmacy offering COVID-19 antibody treatment

More pharmacies across the country are starting to offer a monoclonal antibody treatment.

BLOOMSBURG, Pa. — Pharmacist Jennifer Seltzer spent the better part of the past year focused on giving out the vaccine. 

Now, she's taking on an additional challenge: treating people with COVID. 

She is doing it right in the back of her pharmacy, The Medicine Shoppe in Bloomsburg.

"So really today is the first day that I am reaching out to our local providers and letting them know that they can send patients here now," she said.

Seltzer is receiving a supply of a monoclonal antibody treatment called Regen-Cov from the state Department of Health.

It's free of charge and available to COVID-positive patients, as well as high-risk individuals who have been exposed to the virus.

"What it does is it neutralizes the COVID-19 virus, so it prevents the progression of the disease," Seltzer said.

"And [the injection] goes into four different sites. So we administer into the back of each arm, and then in the abdomen," Seltzer said.

The pharmacy is giving out the treatments in the same part of the building where testing is done, away from regular business, to prevent exposing customers and staff.

"It definitely might be more convenient for somebody to get themselves or their family members who are ill into a location like ours where they can basically drive up to the door, come in, sit, be comfortable, get treated, and then go home," Seltzer said.

The injections only take about five minutes. But patients will stay for another hour to be monitored. 

Seltzer says the next step is bringing the treatment directly to a patient's home. 

"I have enough staff availability that if someone had a 90-year-old grandmother who is really ill and they can't get her out of the house, and she isn't at that critical stage where she needs to go to the hospital, we can go to her," she said.

Watch more stories about the coronavirus pandemic on WNEP's YouTube page.

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