`I didn’t think twice about saying no,` said Singh, a Massachusetts General Hospital doctor.
Like Singh, many other patients around the world have not hesitated to participate in the remdesivir trial in the past few weeks.
The number of people wanting to try is so large that the US National Institutes of Health has almost reached its initial goal of 440 patients and is expanding the scope of the study.
The drug remdesivir is visually inspected at Gilead’s US headquarters.
`I would register my whole family immediately if necessary,` said Dr. Libby Hohmann, who is treating Mr. Jag Singh and more than 30 others.
For most patients, nCoV causes mild or moderate symptoms, which can include fever, cough and sometimes pneumonia.
In tests on animals infected with SARS and MERS, two diseases also caused by coronaviruses, remdesivir helped prevent infection and reduced the severity of symptoms if people took the drug soon after infection.
Gilead Sciences has distributed the drug to more than 1,700 seriously ill patients in trials.
`Patients signed up for Gilead’s trial thinking of their friends and loved ones. I can only imagine how they would feel in that position. We are doing this process ethically.`
The company currently reserves 1.5 million doses of remdesivir, enough for more than 140,000 treatments, depending on the treatment duration.
This unit provides drugs for two studies in China, with results expected at the end of April. Two other trials are being carried out in the US, Asia, Europe and some other regions.
`The patient was so worried that he signed up (for a drug trial),` said Dr. Arun Sanyal, head of the research team at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond city.
His first patient to be tested on remdesivir was healthy and had the virus a few days before showing symptoms.
A patient infected with Covid-19 was admitted to the intensive care unit of Wyckoff Heights Medical Center on April 2.
At University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, Dr. Grace McComse has tested six patients.
`The number of people infected with Covid-19 is getting younger and younger, around 30 years old,` she said.
The study conducted by the US Department of Health and Human Services was considered the most rigorous because it used a placebo.
From a therapist to a patient, Dr. Jag Singh said he is willing to take this opportunity to contribute to the progress of medicine, even if he himself does not benefit much.
`Many people are hesitant when they hear the concept of ‘placebo’,` said Dr. Libby Hohmann.