A new experimental drug has been tested and seems very promising in defeating the novel coronavirus, COIVID-19.
It has been said to definitely help make COVID-19 patients feel tremendous relief and/or battle the virus. They haven't completely tested the new drug as far as taking in the placebo subjects but they have seen an increase of positive effects since testing.
The drug, Remdesivir, has made Gilead Sciences feel hopeful for a drug to cure the virus by attacking it even during the patient's worst symptoms.
According to NBC News:
The first study, from Gilead Sciences, found that patients who were given a 10-day treatment course of the drug "achieved similar improvement in clinical status compared with those taking a 5-day treatment course," the company, which makes the drug, said in a press release Wednesday.
The other study, published in The Lancet, found remdesivir had no effect on reducing COVID-19 death rates, or even on making people feel better faster.
Gilead has not yet released enough information from its trial to show what that "improvement" means for patients. The company said full results would be published "in the coming weeks."
The analysis did not compare remdesivir to a placebo, so it's impossible to determine whether any benefits were due to the drug or whether patients would have improved on their own.
Separately, The Lancet study's conclusion was muddied because the research was stopped early, because the investigators in Wuhan, China, were only able to recruit half of the patients they'd planned to study.
"This is not the outcome we hoped for," Bin Cao, the study's author and a professor at China-Japan Friendship Hospital and Capital Medical University in China, said in a press release. "We are mindful that we were only able to enroll 237 of the target 453 patients because the COVID-19 outbreak was brought under control in Wuhan."
Even though the test isn't completely in stone for how it actually works and reacts I have felt hopeful this is the first real step in helping those who are dying. So far the results have been very successful.