Dr Deepthi Jayasekara

Clinical Professor and Consultant Physician

Infectious Diseases

Remember JFK’s slogan for the 20th century America about new challenges we faced back then and how to overcome those challenges? We are here in the 21st century and are facing somewhat different scenarios which threaten mankind and the existence of the global normalcy in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.

We, as Infectious Disease physicians got excited to hear that the very first antiviral for COVID-19 was FDA approved yesterday for emergency use in moderate-to-severe COVID 19 patients. Based on review of the topline data from the randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial conducted by NIAID and from the Gilead-sponsored open-label trial that evaluated different durations of Remdesivir , it is reasonable to believe that the known and potential benefits of Remdesivir outweigh the known and potential risks of the drug for the treatment of patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19.

Most doctors are somewhat paranoid about the inevitable surge of a new wave of COVID-19 as we talk about reopening businesses next few weeks. While some believe that stay-at-home orders are impinging on their constitutional rights, countries like Japan and Singapore already experienced new waves of cases, prompting some soul searching on who are mostly affected by the new wave cases like the low-paid migrant workers who live in congested dormitories in urban settings. Therefore, we need to be cautiously optimistic about reopening the economy. Let us all be mindful of the fact that this is not only a healthcare crisis but also an economic tsunami and people are currently impacted by both those adverse scenarios equally.

Scientists are working diligently in search of an effective vaccine against COVID 19 and the most promising news were reported from Oxford group and Pfizer with a German group called BioNTec last week. New FDA-approved Remdesivir and other medications like Hydroxychloroquin, Ivermectin, Tocilizumab with Convalescent plasma have already been instrumental in saving thousands of lives affected by COVID 19. While healthcare professionals accelerate the clinical trials on those therapeutics and vaccines, we need to be confidant and optimistic about what the future holds after the pandemic. It will not be a utopian dream of a prosperous world, but we are going to get through this, and we will be back to near-normalcy in a few months.