WHO Hopes Remdesevir, Other Drugs to Prove to Be Helpful in COVID-19 Treatment - Ryan

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th April, 2020) The World Health Organization (WHO) hopes that remdesevir and other drugs prove helpful in COVID-19 treatment, Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme Michael J. Ryan said Wednesday.

"I wouldn't like to make any specific to comment on that because I haven't read those publications in detail," Ryan told a virtual briefing, when asked to comment on the latest study of remdesivir published in the Lancet journal.

"We have a scientific review process in house where we do systematic reviews at various times on different aspects of the response, especially on drug efficacy and the efficacy of other interventions. We would like to look at this in the context of a broader look at the overall data regarding remdesivir. But we are hopeful that this drug and others may prove to be helpful," he added.

In addition to treatment, WHO is tracking more than 90 sero-epidemiological studies that focus on antibodies.

"There are some papers, pre-publication papers that have come out that have suggested low seroprevalence in low percentage of the people that tested that they actually have antibodies. If these tests that they have used are reliable it indicates that a large proportion of the population remains susceptible to COVID-19," Maria van Kekhove, a WHO technical lead on COVID-19, said.

Van Kerkhove said earlier this week that the presence of antibodies did not automatically mean immunity to the COVID-19.

More than 3,150,000 coronavirus cases have been recorded globally, according to the statistics collected by Johns Hopkins University.