Managed Healthcare Executive® State of Industry Survey: COVID-19 Here To Stay

Any flickering notion that the COVID-19 pandemic was behind us, allowing other healthcare issues to take center stage was extinguished when the omicron variant started to circulate in November.

Respondents to our State of the Industry survey provided answers prior to the omicron-fueled surge in COVID-19, yet a large majority either somewhat agreed (49%) or strongly agreed (28%) that COVID-19 would become an endemic disease.

But the 100 respondents to the survey (not every respondent answered every question and fewer than 100 answered these COVID-19 questions) also were confident that the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines would protect against new variants: 44% somewhat agreed that the vaccines would provide protection and 8% strongly agreed with the statement that they would.

But that is far from unanimous, and 28% somewhat agreed that the vaccines won’t provide protection and 7% strongly agreed with a statement that they won’t.

The role that monoclonal antibodies treatments will play in COVID-19 prevention and treatment is still being sorted out by researchers, clinicians — and the government. And, as with other aspects of the pandemic and the response to it, the role of monoclonal antibodies has taken on a political dimension: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has criticized the Biden administration for not providing more monoclonal antibody treatments to his state. Respondents to our survey were evenly divided on monoclonal antibodies playing an important role in preventing COVID-19: 36% either somewhat or strongly agreed that monoclonal antibody therapies would be important in pre-exposure prophylaxis whereas 30% somewhat or strongly disagreed that they would, and 35% indicated that they were neutral on the question.