Coronavirus: Doctor who treated first US patient says new remdesivir study shows ‘promising’ early result
- Hospital group conducting clinical trials will await peer review before releasing more details
- Doctor involved warns that remdesivir is no panacea, and that social distancing must be practised until there is a vaccine
A doctor who treated the first Covid-19 patient in the US, using a much-discussed antiviral medication approved for emergency use last week, said on Monday that further studies on the drug done within his hospital group have shown “early, but very promising” results.
Dr George Diaz, an infectious disease specialist at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington, said that Providence Health & Services, which has a network of 51 hospitals on the US west coast, has been conducting a retrospective review of the hospitals’ use of Gilead Sciences’ experimental drug remdesivir in clinical trials.
Diaz’s patient zero, a 35-year-old man who arrived in Seattle on January 15 after visiting family in Wuhan, China – where the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 emerged – was given remdesivir soon after he was admitted, confirmed to have the disease and developed pneumonia.
The patient was able to breathe without supplemental oxygen within 24 hours of the first dose and was well enough to be discharged within five days, said Diaz, prompting the Providence hospital group to run clinical trials on other cases that began to proliferate on the west coast.
“We have very preliminary results, but we also appear to be seeing mortality benefit with remdesivir use as compared to standard of care therapy,” Diaz said. “So those results are early but very promising, and we are waiting a peer review before discussing further data.”