He adds that you will not need this for “90 percent of patients”. Hypothetically, if you could detect that someone has the viral infection without symptoms, that is the best time for the antiviral to be given for it to work. “Once the virus starts replicating there is not much the antiviral can do,” adds Dr Ray.
This is no mean feat – how can we determine who has the virus before symptoms persist? “This has always been the chicken and egg question with antivirals for respiratory illnesses.”
This happens in general with all antivirals, but focusing on Remdesivir and COVID-19, Dr Ray said that we need to examine the results from Solidarity Trial and the Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACCT1), which was a large trial in the UK and Europe. Now the ACCT1 trial showed a reduction in the length of hospital stay but it is important to analyse the subgroups of patients from the large trial.
So like it was said before, the timing of administering the drug and the severity of the…
