Hello All - just wanted to give people on Rituxan or Ocrevus a bit of a relief. I had a "phone check in" with my Neuro this morning and he was on a call with Neuro's across the country about what they are actually seeing with people on MS Meds... and they are seeing NO increased rate of serious illness or death among people on Rituxan/Ocrevus. I was soooo nervous about this.
I live in the Northern NJ "hot zone" - his practice is at St. Barnabus Hospital - it is like 20 miles from NYC. The practice has has 20+ patients on Rituxan/Ocrevus who have tested positive for the Virus and all 20 are fine. Only 5 even needed hospitalization. They have seen only 2 deaths among their entire 1200 patient population - both were elderly and pretty disabled. One was in a Long Term Care facility that got hit hard.
Of course it is true that if you are on Rituxan/Ocrevus your ability to create anti-bodies is severely limited (although not zero which I feared) - AND they have no idea if they would allow any possible vaccine yet - will depend on a lot of factors...
All-in-all - this did make me feel a lot better!
I live in the Northern NJ "hot zone" - his practice is at St. Barnabus Hospital - it is like 20 miles from NYC. The practice has has 20+ patients on Rituxan/Ocrevus who have tested positive for the Virus and all 20 are fine. Only 5 even needed hospitalization. They have seen only 2 deaths among their entire 1200 patient population - both were elderly and pretty disabled. One was in a Long Term Care facility that got hit hard.
Of course it is true that if you are on Rituxan/Ocrevus your ability to create anti-bodies is severely limited (although not zero which I feared) - AND they have no idea if they would allow any possible vaccine yet - will depend on a lot of factors...
All-in-all - this did make me feel a lot better!
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