UHK obtains supply of highly promising anti-COVID drug

UNIVERSITY Hospital Kerry has secured supplies of a highly promising drug treatment for the COVID-19 disease.

The hospital has been granted access to an international programme for drug Remdesivir, the HSE confirmed to The Kerryman this week.

Confirmation of its presence among the arsenal of viral drugs in UHK comes as new data was made public showing the drug’s effectiveness in reducing recovery time from 15 days to 11 days in hospitalised COVID-19 patients.

Remdesivir is made and owned by Gilead Sciences Inc, a multinational with a plant in Cork employing 500, where 30 per cent of the pharma giant’s tablet output is manufactured.

It was approved for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration agency at the start of the month.

Developed as a hepatitis drug, it was used during the Ebola outbreak to limited success, but the antiviral has shown promise from an early stage in the COVID-19 pandemic.

That promise has become clearer on foot of the publication of the trial data in the New England Journal of Medicine website on Friday.

In the study, 1,063 seriously ill COVID patients were randomly assigned the drug or a placebo,.

The result would appear to bear out the hopes being placed in Remdesivir as one viable COVID therapy while the world awaits a vaccine.

Those who received the drug recovered faster from the disease than those who received the placebo, and those who received the drug also developed fewer serious adverse COVID effects.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which sponsored the trial, announced the results just a few weeks ago, but until Friday none of the data had been available to doctors across the globe scrambling for effective therapies against the new Coronovirus.

The acquisition of the drug by University Hospital Kerry comes as welcome news in a county that had recorded high initial rates of the virus.

There have been no new cases of COVID confirmed here in six days, as of the time of print.

UHK would not confirm if the drug has, as yet, been administered to patients here.

“University Hospital Kerry has been granted entry to an international Expanded Access Programme for Remdesivir but cannot comment on whether any patients have received the drug,” a spokesperson said.