Hospitalized patients with advanced COVID-19 and lung involvement who received remdesivir recovered faster than similar patients who received placebo, according to a preliminary data analysis from a randomized, controlled trial involving 1,063 patients, which began on Feb. 21.
The trial, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is the first clinical trial launched in the United States to evaluate an experimental treatment for COVID-19.
The first trial participant was an American who was repatriated after being quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship that docked in Yokohama, Japan, and volunteered to participate in the study at the first study site, the University of Nebraska Medical Center/Nebraska Medicine, in February 2020. A total of about 450 people across 68 sites ultimately joined the study—47 in the United States and 21 in countries in Europe and Asia.
Andre Kalil, M.D., a physician and researcher at UNMC and its hospital partner, Nebraska Medicine, has been leading the trial at UNMC.
“My colleagues and I are pleased to be part of this study which is showing good preliminary results,” said Dr. Kalil, a professor of infectious diseases in the UNMC Department of Internal Medicine. “We all are working diligently and swiftly to do the science in the appropriate way to help in this pandemic. It also gives us hope that soon this drug may be used widely.”
In its National Quarantine Unit in Omaha, UNMC/Nebraska Medicine housed 13 people who were repatriated Feb. 17 by the U.S. State Department from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Eleven of the 13 tested positive for COVID-19 and were monitored and have since been released. Nebraska Medicine also monitored and/or treated other hospitalized patients in the community.