The spike in COVID-19 cases across the country – and in most of Western Washington - comes just as the FDA approved the first treatment for the Coronavirus. The drug is remdesivir, but doctors do have a warning about the drug.
On Friday, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and Fire Chief Harold Scoggins visited the North Seattle free drive-thru COVID testing site, announcing plans to get the sites ready for winter weather with heat lamps and tents. Nearly 300,000 people have been tested across the city’s free test sites.
“We’re going to be in this pandemic though at least through the middle of next year - probably though the end of next year,” Durkan said.
As the city prepares to keep dealing with COVID in 2021, doctors say the FDA’s approval of remdesivir as a COVID treatment should not bring you any sense of security.
“It’s by no means a cure. It’s not a magic bullet - it doesn’t make a really big difference,” Curtis said. “It’s really important to understand what remdesivir does. It on average, shortens the course of the illness by a little bit. So at the bedside you don’t see any differences,” said Dr. Randall Curtis, a pulmonologist for UW Medicine and an ICU doctor at Harborview Medical Center.
Curtis said every COVID patient sick enough to go to the hospital already gets treated with remdesivir. However, he says about one in five patients in the ICU do not survive.
Hospitals already use remdesivir to treat COVID patients under the FDA’s previous emergency use authorization, so Curtis says the official approval basically just means less paperwork for doctors.
“What we really need is a vaccine that works,” Curtis said.
President Trump was also treated with remdesivir among other drugs, and has since been touting his recovery.
" I felt like Superman," President Trump said at a recent rally, pretending to rip open his shirt.
“It worries me that people might think because one high-profile person did really well, we don’t have to worry about this disease,” Curtis said.
Dr. Curtis warns the best tools we have still are prevention – meaning masks and distancing.
“That’s going to save us from another surge this fall and winter,” Curtis said.
Mayor Durkan said when there is a COVID vaccine approved, the city’s free test sites would likely become places where you can get a vaccine – though that likely won’t happen until at least the middle of next year.
Cox Media Group
