A handful of COVID-19 patients at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange are undergoing a daily infusion of Remdesivir in an experiment to see if the antiviral drug helps people recover from the disease.
If the medication proves effective, it could become one of few options healthcare workers have to treat critically ill people during the pandemic.
But while early test results at one hospital appear promising, medical researchers participating in the nationwide study don’t yet know Remdesivir’s true efficacy against COVID-19.
Remdesivir, a clear liquid that is injected into a standard IV, is already used to treat other viruses such as ebola and herpes. Because the medication is administered via intravenous drip, the patient receiving treatment must be sick enough to have been hospitalized.
Patients who are part of the trial are on either a five or ten-day course, with a larger “loading” dose of Remdesivir given on the first day and smaller doses each following day, said Joscelyn Green, a registered nurse and cancer research manager at St. Joseph who is heading the Remdesivir study.
“Usually a loading dose is given in all different types of scenarios to make sure that (the patient) gets the most potent drug the very first day. It’s kind of like a kickoff,” Green said.
There are side effects, including nausea, vomiting and headache, but adverse reactions to drugs used in hospital settings are common, Green said.
The trial at St. Joseph Hospital began April 9 and is being overseen by Gilead Sciences, the Bay Area biotech company that makes Remdesivir. Other hospitals, including nearby MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center, are participating in the nationwide study.
While Remdesivir’s usefulness in treating COVID-19 is not yet scientifically sound, a hospital in Chicago that has been treating severe cases with the drug reported quick recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, according to STAT, a health news organization.
The University of Chicago Medicine enrolled 125 people with COVID-19 to try Remdesivir, STAT reported on Thursday. Most were discharged in less than a week. Two patients died.
At St. Joseph Hospital, it’s tough to tell so far if Remdesivir is working, Green said. The research team plans to follow up with patients about a month after their trial began to track their recovery.
“Once we hit that point and get more information and aggregate that data … we’ll have a better outlook of what Remdesivir can really do for these patients,” she said.
While the test run at St. Joseph is expected to grow, the exact number of patients in the trial was not released, and health privacy laws guard patients’ identities.
On Saturday, 24 of 25 Orange County hospitals reported that 155 people were hospitalized with the disease, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency.
Public health officials have not released numbers of admitted patients at the hospital level, and the number of hospitals providing patient data to the county fluctuates daily, making comparisons over time difficult.
To date, 32 Orange County residents have died from COVID-19.
While the Remdesivir tests are underway, St. Joseph Hospital has other experiments in the works.
Earlier this month, physicians transfused the blood plasma from a man who had recovered from COVID-19 into an elderly man who was hospitalized with the disease with hopes that the antibodies that fought the disease in one man could do it again in the other.
The plasma, donated by a recovered 36-year-old man from San Diego, has been given to two other coronavirus patients since then. The patients’ conditions are not yet public, but the hospital has since called for more plasma donations.
Besides research and tests, nurses at St. Joseph are caring for critically ill COVID-19 patients as best they can, Green said.
“They’re in there stroking their foreheads, they’re in there praying with them, crying with them … It’s heartwarming,” she said.
