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WASHINGTON – There’s new hope in the search for a drug to treat the Coronavirus as researchers work toward a vaccine.
It’s called Remdesivir, a drug in initially intended to treat the Ebola virus. That application wasn’t fruitful, but there are signs that Remdesivir may be useful in reducing the lethality and severity of the Coronavirus.
In preliminary results of this new study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, more than 1,000 patients were randomly assigned to take either Remdesivir or a placebo.
It took the placebo patients 15 days to recover. It took the Remdesivir patients 11 days to recover, a 31% improvement. Specifically, the drug blocks an enzyme the virus needs to replicate. Researchers can use that knowledge to create other drugs.
Although, researchers are clear: this is not by any means a cure for Coronavirus.
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