Still Waiting for a Panacea

There has been much effort in trying to find treatments that will save lives in the Covid-19 pandemic. One, much-touted possibility, was Remdesivir, produced by the US company Gilead. Although a small US study claimed it reduced the time patients needed to spend in hospital, a much larger (with 3000 patients in each of the treatment and the control groups) by the Solidarity programme of the World Health Organisation found it had no effect on deaths over 28 days of treatment (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/16/remdesivir-has-very-little-effect-on-covid-19-mortality-who-finds-trial-drug-coronavirus). In spite of this, Gilead have signed (prior to these test results) a contract with the European Commission, worth £733m, to deliver 500,000 doses of the medication. The Solidarity study attracted 12,000 patients from 30 countries and also investigated the anti-malarial Hydroxychloroquine, the HIV antiretroviral Lopinavir and interferon (interferons are antiviral agents, that prevent viruses invading new cells). None of these treatments (at the doses used and in the ways they were administered) had a statistically significant benefit by reducing mortality. The tests are, however, properly randomised designs that can (unlike some others) be completely trusted. The search goes on.