WAAY 31 is once again joined by Dr. Ali Hassoun who gives his insight into coronavirus issues of late like results experts are seeing with remdesivir, and the ongoing search for a vaccine.
>> najahe sherman: we are back with dr. ali hassoun infectious disease specialist at huntsville hospital.
>> dan shaffer: the food and drug administration approved the use of remdesivir in the use of coronavirus patients.
Now the only approved treatment for patients in the u.s. the president received it.
We know you treat your patients at huntsville hospital with it.
How effective is it from what you've seen and how important is this step by the f.d.a.?
>> dr. hassoun: so in our patients and from the studies that we've seen, i think it has a modest benefit in treating those who have pneumonia and those who have high -- what we call low oxygen saturation when they come to the hospital.
We've definitely seen the benefit and i think in addition to what we use steroid these combination have shown some promise.
You know, we really as the f.d.a.
Approved this, this is a good step because there was mainly an e.u.a., which is the emergency use authorization so there's limitation of how we use it by the f.d.a.
Approving it fully it's going to give us more ability to use it and choice to use the drug.
I think, again, it's a modest benefit.
I'm hoping we'll get more and more trials for other medication that can add to it where it's going to help us to pick and choose which would be the most appropriate for our patients.
>> najahe sherman: moderna announced it reached its target enrollment for coronavirus vaccine, 30,000 people have enrolled and received their first shot of the vaccine or placebo.
So what does this mean for the search and time line of a vaccine?
>> dr. hassoun: so -- and that's very encouraging news that they enrolled what they required of 30,000 and they said they probably with going to add more.
Remember, the study with mow derr in a and most of the other is two shots.
It's going to be interesting when the second shot is going to happen because that's when we'll see the efficacy and safety to be maintained.
But this is very good news because that means if most of the patient got the first shot, hopefully, hopefully in about a month from now most of them have got the second one so we can get more data and information.
Safety and efficacy can take a little longer but i think it's very good news to know that.
>> dan shaffer: just yesterday we learned a volunteer in astra zeneca's trial in brazil died.
Researchers said there's no reason to stop the trial, leading us to believe it's not due to the trial itself, perhaps it's coronavirus symptoms and illness.
The company trial is on hold after a patient got sick.
When we look at these trials overall, what is the process when someone does get sick and how detrimental is that to the study?
>> dr. hassoun: so in general in any trial, when there's a patient have what we call adverse events whoever is supervising that patient as a physician and they think an adverse event, whether it's related to the vaccine or a drug or none, they immediately report that to the company who's supervising the trial and they report it to the board.
They even, if it's a severe adverse event, they need to report it within 12 or 24 hours.
So that gets reported pretty fast.
And when they get that information, usually whoever supervising the whole trial will decide to stop, wait, or know what the patient had but in general, there's what we call severe adverse event, most of the trial be will get to be reviewed quickly, put on hold sometime, make sure it's not related to that medicine or vaccine, and then reassess if you can start.
Remember, you know, what i heard about the one in brazil, they said it was related in the arm of placebo, not related to the vaccine arm so.
That might be a good thing to know because we want to know if it was a vaccine effect or something else that affected the patient.
We're going to need to get more information, of course.
>> najahe sherman: when we look at the recent trends, one concern is another shutdown.
Do you think that's likely and what is your message to businesses who are really struggling right now to get by?
>> i really hope not to have complete shutdown and lockdown.
Most of the people now are aware about what is covid, how deadly it is.
What basic things we can do to help.
And i think what we can do is we can adjust that accordingly and make it in a way where we can reverse our work, virtual, like schools back to face-to-face and adjust it according to widespread infection and hopefully by that we will be able to do it and manage it rather than complete lockdown, hopefully.
>> dan shaffer: any final thoughts, any message for the community tonight?
>> dr. hassoun: you know, i think we having now the f.d.a.
Approved remdesivir, moderna is talking about the vaccine, so we do have good news in the way of information coming up.
It's really still, we're sticking with the basics.
We need where we continue with our prevention, hoping we get more and more modality of the treatment, the vaccine get approved.
So there's more hope coming up.
It's just the community and everybody else needs to keep up for the mex few month and hopefully we can manage this.
>> dan shaffer: good to end on a positive note.
>> najahe sherman: thank you so much.
We
WAAY 31 is once again joined by Dr. Ali Hassoun who gives his insight into coronavirus issues of late like the increasing number of..
