How America can beat COVID-19 and save lives
When it comes to the coronavirus, we shouldn’t have to choose between preserving the economy and saving lives. We can do both without waiting for a vaccine. Here’s how.
STEP1>> Clearly define the root of the problem. We face a highly contagious and dangerous virus that has no proven treatments or vaccines. We need to effectively treat hospitalized patients, but how do we prevent people from getting hospitalized in the first place? Targeting the root of the problem will reduce death and suffering while eliminating downstream problems, like personal protective equipment shortages and overloaded intensive care units.
STEP2>> List the potential solutions. The two key approaches that have the greatest potential to yield a quick resolution to the pandemic are vaccine development and drug repurposing.
STEP3>> Pick a path. The fastest and cheapest way to end the pandemic is using outpatient trials to identify existing antiviral drugs that can extinguish the virus. Most of the trials you hear about are inpatient trials where drugs are given to hospitalized patients. But the most important trials are the ones you rarely hear about — outpatient trials where people are given drugs as soon as they learn they are infected. The problem is these trials are vastly underfunded.
A virus is like a fire. The earlier you detect it, the easier it is to put out. We may already have the drugs to solve this problem. We just need to test them. Instead of sending people with the virus home to fend for themselves, hoping they don’t get much sicker, we should encourage them to consider enrolling in a clinical trial. We are only beginning to do that.
STEP4>> Identify which antiviral
drugs to test. Researchers have identified five off-the-shelf antiviral drugs that have the most promise when given early: remdesivir, peginterferon lambda, camostat, favipiravir and niclosamide.
STEP5>> Estimate costs. Testing the five top contenders in outpatient trials will cost about $10 million.
STEP6>> Raise the money. While governments and corporations are currently not funding outpatient trials, Bill Gates, Sean Parker, Jeff Rothschild and Vinod Khosla have contributed millions of dollars to do so.
Despite that funding, researchers at UC San Francisco, Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, UCLA and other institutions who are eager to start outpatient trials on promising antiviral drugs still lack funds.
In order to address this lack of funding, I set up a nonprofit, the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund (CETF), www.treatearly. org. In just a few weeks, we have recruited a world-class scientific advisory board to review grant applications and begun raising funds and distributing grants. CETF started with $1 million and, in the past two weeks, has raised another $1 million from more than 100 donors.
CETF is the only organization exclusively funding outpatient trials for up to $1 million. And because the organization is small, nimble and focused, it can approve grants for solid research in as few as three days. By only funding trials that are ready to enroll, CETF reduces the discovery time. Because the research we fund is so diverse, we maximize the shots on goal.
CETF also helps grantees publicize their trials to boost enrollment and provides support for both drug companies and institutions to accelerate research collaborations.
All of us can do our part to reduce the time to a treatment by spreading the word about these outpatient trials and encouraging friends to enroll.
This disease is beatable, and the drugs to beat it are likely already sitting on the shelf. The sooner we can raise the funds to support these critical outpatient trials to identify these drugs, the sooner we can reopen our country.