WHO says remdesivir has “little or no effect” as Covid-19 treatment

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Remdesivir has “little or no effect” on death rates among hospitalized coronavirus patients, according to the World Health Organization.

Findings from the WHO’s Solidarity Therapeutics Trial suggest that the remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon drug treatment regimens “appeared to have little or no effect on 28-day mortality or the in-hospital course of COVID-19 among hospitalized patients.”

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Published on Thursday, the study is considered the world’s largest randomized control trial of coronavirus treatments.

Remdesivir is one of the drugs that US President Donald Trump took following his Covid-19 diagnosis.

WHO held the investigation in 405 hospitals across 30 countries on 11,266 patients, with 2750 having taken remdesivir.

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“No study drug definitely reduced mortality (in unventilated patients or any other subgroup of entry characteristics), initiation of ventilation or hospitalization duration,” the authors of the study wrote.

Randomized controlled trials are deemed as the “gold standard” of clinical studies because they can properly remove bias. However, the WHO study has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Promising initial results

In April, White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said the initial data on remdesivir as a Covid-19 treatment was “quite good news.”

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He previously said that Gilead Sciences’ antiviral drug sets a new standard of care for COVID-19 patients.

Dr. Fauci told reporters that the data manifested a “clear-cut positive effect in diminishing time to recover.”

Moreover, the top health expert said that the average time of recovery for patients taking remdesivir was 11 days. Those in the placebo group had 15 days. He emphasized that the mortality benefit of remdesivir “has not yet reached statistical significance.”

In July, Trump announced that the US government will send Texas hospitals cases of remdesivir.

There are no drugs for Covid-19 yet that has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Remdesivir has reportedly lessened the recovery time of some hospitalized Covid-19 patients.

In May, remdesivir received an emergency use authorization from the FDA, allowing hospitals and doctors to give it to patients hospitalized with Covid-19.

Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Human Services said on June 29 that there has been a deal that gives the country more than 500,000 treatment courses of the antiviral drug for hospitals through September. The agency said that this represents 100% of Gilead’s predicted production for July and 90% of production for August and September.

In September, health officials in the US, including Dr. Fauci, assured the public of coronavirus vaccine safety.

“People are always saying, ’How do I know it’s safe? How do I know it’s effective? There’s a lot of confusion because there are mixed messages that are coming,” Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a Facebook Live conversation with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

Health authorities reiterated that coronavirus vaccine safety is ensured through rigorous clinical trials to pass the federal government’s authorization amid concerns about the impact of politics on the process.

“We already know that a certain percentage of the population we still need to convince to get vaccinated,” Dr. Fauci said. “When a vaccine comes, we look at it as an important tool to supplement the public health measures that we do. It allows us to more quickly and with less stringency get back to some degree of normal,” he noted.