Some patients have recovered after receiving Gilead Sciences ’ experimental antiviral treatment remdesivir, though there isn’t yet enough clinical data to understand if the drug is truly safe and effective and, if so, for what specific disease stages or populations. That could soon change: A series of clinical trials that began in early February will start to generate results in March and April...The odds are high that at least one of these treatments will prove effective in reducing deaths from COVID-19.
Elsewhere, drugmakers Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Sanofi SA are studying whether their jointly-owned drug Kevzara helps prevent overactive lung inflammation in severe Covid-19 patients receiving the drug last week in New York....
Hospitals also have begun to include the old malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in treatment protocols [blogger's note: favorable results have been reported when these drugs are used with azithromycin]. Those drugs, which aren’t approved by regulators to treat the virus but have generated promising but inconclusive results in small, open label studies, can be administered by doctors on an off-label basis. Several large drug manufacturers have vowed to donate large quantities of the drug or crank up production.
Meanwhile, testing is ramping up, and the stumbling block of requiring a doctor's order for a test may well disappear in the next few weeks. It already has in Hayward, just 10 miles east of us over the bridge.
On the inventory side Factory America is producing more ventilators and masks, with higher production rates to follow. Supply of essential matériel has been woefully lacking for two months, but that will change soon as long as most of us remain uninfected or at least asymptomatic. Dawn hasn't broken, but there's a faint glow on the horizon.
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| (Yosemite image from KVDDesign) |
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