The new COVID-19 drug remdesivir is here. Now what?
Though remdesivir, a new treatment for COVID-19, has been hailed as a game changer, most people sick with the coronavirus will have to recover or die without getting the drug. “Everyone won’t be able to get it, because there just isn’t enough of it at this point in time,” says Raymond Woosley, a cardiologist and clinical pharmacologist at the University of Arizona College of Medicine Phoenix. Supplies are limited and the federal government is asking state health departments to distribute the drug to hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. Vials of the still-experimental medication have been distributed to 13 states so far. But the Infectious Diseases Society of America has warned that tens of thousands of people each month may need the treatment throughout the summer. Remdesivir shortened recovery time for seriously ill patients by four days in a clinical trial comparing the drug with a placebo. Those results were considered so promising that a safety oversight committee stopped the clinical trial early to give people taking the placebo...