Trump’s doctors are targeting a ‘sweet spot’ in fighting COVID-19 by using experimental treatments early, but – Business Insider India

Posted: October 4, 2020 at 1:58 pm

President Donald Trump has now received two experimental treatments for his coronavirus infection, a combination that doctors say is logical but untested.

After being flown to Walter Reed Medical Center, President Donald Trump received an IV infusion of the antiviral drug remdesivir, the White House physician said Friday night. He previously got a dose of an experimental antibody cocktail.

After testing positive for the coronavirus, Trump had a fever, a mild cough, nasal congestion, and fatigue, Conley said. The timeline on when exactly the president tested positive was not immediately clear, but Conley said the COVID-19 diagnosis was confirmed via testing on Thursday.

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Shortly after Conley provided an update on Trump's health Saturday, an anonymous source familiar with the president's health appeared to contradict the physician's assessment.

"The thought is if you can reduce the viral burden with an antiviral early on, then maybe the progression will be halted in some way," Dr. Mangala Narasimhan, an intensive care doctor who oversees ICU care at Northwell Health, told Business Insider on Saturday.

"Given the fact he's 74, a male, and obese, I think he's in a higher-risk category, so his chances of getting sick from this are higher," she added. "They are trying to prevent that from happening"

The antibody treatment is made by the biotech company Regeneron and is not approved by the FDA. The experimental treatment aims to boost the body's immune response to help in fighting the virus.

Read more: Trump just received Regeneron's experimental COVID-19 treatment. Here's the inside story of the biotech and its 2 billionaire founders.

"We are clearly in a data-free zone right here," Dr. Taison Bell, an infectious-disease and critical-care physician at the University of Virginia's medical center told Business Insider on Saturday. "What his medical team is doing is trying what they can. The more we learn about these different combinations, the more we'll be informed. Right now, it's kind of like we're driving in the dark."

"It's right at that cusp where someone is sick or starting to get sick, but they aren't quite super sick," said Bell, who was a principal investigator for a National Institutes of Health trial that tested remdesivir.

Read more: Trump got a dose of Regeneron's experimental coronavirus treatment. Here's how the biotech and 8 others are racing to develop new ways to fight COVID-19.

Both physicians emphasized the lack of publicly available, detailed information on Trump's health.

Bell and Narasimhan both said there is no reason to not believe the health reports are accurate.

A possible sign that Trump's condition is worsening would be if he begins to receive steroids, the doctors said.

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Trump's doctors are targeting a 'sweet spot' in fighting COVID-19 by using experimental treatments early, but - Business Insider India

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