How the Search for Covid-19 Treatments Faltered While Vaccines Sped Ahead

But the researchers have spent the past eight months trying to recruit enough participants. They have had trouble finding patients who have recently received a Covid diagnosis, especially with the unpredictable rise and fall of cases.

“This has been the source of the delays for essentially all of the trials around the world,” said Dr. James Porterfield, an infectious disease clinician at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, who is leading the trial.

While doctors like Dr. Porterfield have struggled to carry out studies on their own, a few drugs have become sensations, praised as cure-alls despite a lack of evidence.

The first supposed panacea was hydroxychloroquine, a drug developed for malaria. Television pundits claimed it had healing powers, as did President Trump. Rather than start one large, well-designed trial across many hospitals, doctors began a swarm of small trials.

“There was no coordination, and no centralized leadership,” said Ilan Schwartz, an infectious disease expert at the University of Alberta.

Nevertheless, the F.D.A. gave the drug an emergency clearance as a treatment for people hospitalized with Covid. When large clinical trials finally did begin delivering results, it turned out that the drug provided no benefit — and might even do harm. The agency withdrew its authorization in June.

Many scientists were left embittered, considering all that work a waste of precious time and resources.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/health/covid-drugs-antivirals.html