Kupavskii proved a codegree version of the Erdős--Ko--Rado theorem by showing that for an intersecting family $\mathcal{F} \subseteq \binom{[n]}{k}$ with $n \geq 2k +3d/(1-d/k)$, the minimum $d$-degree of $\mathcal{F}$ is at most $\binom{n-d-1}{k-d-1}$. Huang and Zhang improved the bound on $n$ to $n \geq 2k+2d-3$. In this short note, we prove that if $d = k-1$, then the bound on $n$ can be improved to $2k + \sqrt{2k} + O(1)$. In addition, we extend our method to show that the bound on $n$ can be improved to $2k + 7k^{2/3}+O(k^{1/3})$ when $d=k-2$.