Northern California hospital is approved as site for coronavirus drug trial
A North Coast hospital is testing the experimental drug that UC Davis doctors and researchers used to save the life of the Solano County woman who was the first U.S. citizen to contract COVID-19 through community spread.
St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka has joined two national clinical trials of the antiviral drug Remdesivir to treat moderate and severe cases of COVID-19, St. Joseph officials announced Tuesday in the Times-Standard, a Eureka-based newspaper.
“This is an important opportunity for future patients who present with COVID-19 at St. Joseph Hospital and meet certain criteria, to have access to Remdesivir,” said Dr. Roberta Luskin-Hawk, chief executive, St. Joseph Health, Humboldt County.
Rural Humboldt County had 49 confirmed cases of the coronavirus after five residents tested positive Monday, according to Humboldt County health officials.
Luskin-Hawk, an infectious disease physician, worked with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director and point person in the White House’s response to the pandemic, during the AIDS epidemic, St. Joseph officials said in their statement to the Times-Standard.
“The main goal of the trial is to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of the medication. We are incredibly fortunate to have the local expertise in Humboldt to facilitate the trials,” Luskin-Hawk said.
Antiviral drugs like Remdesivir kill viruses or suppress their ability to replicate in the body. Antivirals, antibody therapies and vaccines are the trio of treatments that hold the most hope to stem the virus’ spread, UC Davis researchers have told The Sacramento Bee.
The experimental drug now cleared for clinical tests at the Eureka hospital has also been offered in trials at several of its sister hospitals in the Providence St. Joseph Health system in Oregon and hard-hit Washington state, but is the first of the network’s Northern California hospitals selected for trial, officials said.
The intravenous drug, produced by the Foster City-based biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences Inc., has proven promising in the treatment of Ebola; and in UC Davis research to cure a lethal strain of coronavirus in cats, UC Davis researchers said.
Gilead is in two late-stage studies to evaluate the drug’s effectiveness in adults diagnosed with COVID-19, St. Joseph officials said, adding that a study of about 1,000 patients nationwide should be complete by May.
UC Davis doctors in mid-February acquired the antiviral drug and emergency permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to administer it to the critically ill Solano County woman.
As The Bee previously reported, the patient, a woman in her 40s, was transferred to Sacramento’s UC Davis Medical Center after five days at NorthBay VacaValley Hospital in Vacaville. She returned home the week of March 15, a UC Davis spokesman told The Bee.
UC Davis soon became one of then 75 sites worldwide selected to evaluate the drug’s benefits. The drug has not yet been proven to improve everyone’s health outcomes, UC Davis Health leaders have said.
St. Joseph Hospital joins that list at a critical time in the fight against the pandemic. California remains under a stay-home order as COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to mount.
A Bee survey of county health departments showed at least 16,181 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 383 coronavirus deaths as the state continues to add vital ventilators and hospital beds at existing hospitals and at emergency field hospitals, including Sleep Train Arena in Natomas.
Worldwide, more than 1.4 million people have contracted the coronavirus, with more than 81,000 dead as of Tuesday afternoon, according to a data map by Johns Hopkins University. The United States has more than 386,000 confirmed cases and over 12,000 fatalities. Nearly 140,000 have been infected and almost 5,500 have died in New York state.
This story was originally published April 7, 2020 at 2:59 PM.
.JPG)