Member of the Georgetown Public Hospital’s Task Force for COVID-19, Dr Mahendra Carpen on Wednesday stated that because of the encouraging signs observed, the institution will continue to use the remdesivir drug to treat mild cases of COVID-19 and will ensure that it is always in stock.
Speaking with Stabroek News, Carpen disclosed that since the clinical trials started, they have seen encouraging results and committed to using it to continue treating COVID-19 patients with mild to moderate symptoms as everyone awaits more definitive and more advanced developments in the fight against COVID-19.
He explained that while they initially started out with a mere 250 doses of the antiviral drug, they have since acquired more and will continue to restock so they can have a six to eight months’ worth of doses in the country for the remainder of the pandemic or until a vaccine has been approved.
“So far we have been able to maintain that kind of arrangement. We have not had a case where we needed the drugs since we started using it and we couldn’t have it,” he noted.
Further, he disclosed that protocols dictate that while remdesivir is to be used for the mild to moderately ill patients, it is sometimes used on severely ill patients. However, its use on the critically ill has been declining in keeping with recommendations.
Carpen added that by the time patients reach the critical or severely ill stage of the disease, it’s very hard to pull them back from their clinical course. “I know of three persons who would’ve not made it; who started out with the severe category but received one or two doses of the remdesivir drug but they were so sick they weren’t able to survive the 5 days course of normal treatment, but it was not as a consequence of the medication,” he assured.
