We are studying the treatment
of early COVID 19,
so we are looking for people who are outpatients
who have been diagnosed with
what's called SARS-CoV-2, which is the name of the virus
that causes COVID 19 so people who have just
gotten told that they have
that infection who have been tested
within the previous 96 hours
It is looking at people very early on
and we know from a number of different other kinds of infections
that if antiviral treatment is going to be effective,
it tends to be most effective if it's given very early on
and so even though
even if we thought that this treatment didn't work later in infection,
we have we are more optimistic that it might work earlier.
The treatment is a treatment of two medications.
One is called hydroxychloroquine.
The other is called as a through my skin.
And there have been reports
both in the test tube
as well as in people that this combination may
suppress the SARS-CoV-2 infection.
There have been so far no rigorous studies of it.
There have been a number of publications
looking at outcomes in hospitalized
patients giving given this treatment,
but none of them have been the rigorous study design
that is usually used to determine whether treatments are effective.
We know that there are
two other studies of hydroxychloroquine
in that are ongoing at the University of Washington.
One is in a very similar patient population
and in fact was designed specifically in conjunction
with the design of the study that we are doing
with an idea being that
they were they were designed in conjunction to have collaborative
tissue, to have information that is
will complement each other.
Their study was designed to be
relatively fast, to be done relatively small,
and to be able to answer a question quickly about whether these drugs
have efficacy in terms of suppressing
the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Our study is larger and is designed to answer a clinically relevant question.
Does this combination prevent hospitalization and death?
The study that we are doing actually has been very carefully
thought about by a number of people, both who are doing the study as well.
As committees that oversee research,
as well as the Food and Drug Administration.
And in fact, the dose of one of the medicines
that we are giving is actually lower than it was initially planned to be
because the FDA had some concerns about potential toxicity
So the study was therefore redesigned with a lower dose.
And in addition, it had already a number of safeguards
that are being put into place to try and make sure
that the people in this study are safe and don't have side effects.
The fact that we can enroll people from around the state,
they don't have to have any visits in person.
They can have telephone numbers.
So if someone has access to a phone,
they can enroll in this study if they're willing.
Hopefully that will ease the burden and make it easier to find people to enroll