The World Health Organization raised hope on that the coronavirus pandemic will only last a few years, but only if the world works together and develops successful treatments and vaccines. While Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was cautious on predicting a timeline for the pandemic while there is no proven vaccine during a press conference on Friday, he does believe that the world has the technology to shorten the lifetime of the pandemic.
While comparing the coronavirus pandemic with the 1918 influenza pandemic, which lasted about two years, Tedros noted that the coronavirus, "situation now with more technology, and of course with more consecutiveness, the virus has a better chance of spreading, it can more fast because we are more connected now."
"But are the same time we have also the technology to stop it and the knowledge to stop it. So we have a disadvantage of globalization, closeness, connectedness but an advantage of better technology," Tedros added, "So we hope to finish this pandemic in less than two years."
Tedros urged that in order for the world's population to shorten the timeline of the coronavirus pandemic, there needs to be national unity and global solidarity, meaning everyone needs to work together to fight and conquer the virus.
The coronavirus has infected over 23 million individuals around the world and led to at least 800,000 deaths.
Alarmingly, coronavirus infections have been cropping up in recent weeks in areas that had previously slowed or stopped its spread. In European countries like France, Germany, and Italy, daily case numbers have reached levels that have not been seen since early spring, when the continent was the pandemic's epicenter. Health officials in Europe, echoing others from around the world, are concerned that the pandemic is entering a new phase: high levels of young and asymptomatic infection.
Treatment Update
According to new data published in Journal of the American Medical Association, moderately ill COVID-19 patients receiving a 5-day treatment course of Gilead Sciences' (NASDAQ: GILD) remdesivir saw clinical improvements to their conditions, but the drug did not prove to shorten hospital stays and a 10-day treatment course did not show any patient benefit.
The new randomized study found that after 11-days of treatment for moderately-ill COVID-19 patients, 65% of patients on a 10-day treatment course, 70% on a 5-day treatment course, and 60% only receiving standard care had left the hospital.
While the 600 participant study did show that moderately ill patients given a 5-day course of the antiviral were less likely to need additional treatments like respiratory aid when compared to those only receiving standard care, it did not show the results the drug has given in other previously published clinical trials.
In a JAMA editorial published alongside the study, the authors note that the differences in study results for the antiviral raise "the question of whether the discrepancies are artifacts of study design choice, including patient population, or whether the drug is less efficacious that hoped."
Remdesivir, which has been proven in the past to shorten hospital stays for severely-ill COVID-19 patients, is currently used under an emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Gilead is working towards making the antiviral drug fully F.D.A. approved for COVID-19 treatment.