Coronavirus patients seeing quick recoveries after using experimental drug

The patients involved in the drug’s clinical trial were all experiencing severe respiratory symptoms. After less than a week of being treated with the drug, patients were able to return home from the hospital.

A video obtained by STAT News provided information on the trial.

“The best news is that most of our patients have already been discharged, which is great. We've only had two patients perish” Dr. Kathleen Mullane who is leading the trial said in the video. Mullane is an infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago.

No therapy for coronavirus has yet been approved, though trials are being organized by the National Institutes of Health involving many drugs and treatments, including remdesivir.

The drug was developed by Gilead Sciences and saw little success when tested against Ebola. The drug was able to treat and prevent coronaviruses that are related to COVID-19, such as SARS and MERS.

The World Health Organization said that remdesivir had potential in the fight against coronavirus in February.

Mullane was quoted in the video saying, “Most of our patients are severe and most of them are leaving at six days, so that tells us duration of therapy doesn't have to be 10 days.”

It’s hard to say whether the drug is really helping patients because no control group was used in the trial.

Many other clinical centres are now working on trials for the drug. Remdesivir is being tested in 2,400 patients experiencing severe coronavirus symptoms throughout 152 trial sites spread across the world. The tests are being sponsored by Gilead. The drug is also being tested in 1,600 patients that only have moderate symptoms in 169 hospitals.

According to Gilead, trial results are expected to be ready at the end of April.

In a statement, the company said, “We understand the urgent need for a COVID-19 treatment and the resulting interest in data on our investigational antiviral drug remdesivir.”

“The totality of the data needs to be analyzed in order to draw any conclusions from the trial. Anecdotal reports, while encouraging, do not provide the statistical power necessary to determine the safety and efficacy profile of remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19.”