Five hospitals to join WHO’s Solidarity Trial to find therapy for COVID-19
Five hospitals, 2 from Ahmedabad and one each from Bhopal, Chennai, and Jodhpur have been authorized to perform a randomized regulated scientific trial, joining with WHO’s solidarity trial to find an efficient treatment against COVID-19 infection.
AIIMS, Jodhpur, the B J Medical College and Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad, and Apollo Hospital, Chennai will be conducting medical trials on 4 therapy methods – a combination of ritonavir and lopinavir with Interferon beta-1a – remdesivir.
There is a plan to enroll a minimum of 20 clinical sites throughout India, as per Dr. Sheela Godbole, national coordinator of the WHO-India Solidarity Trial and head of Epidemiology, ICMR-National AIDS Research Institute.
Godbole said, “If any clinical trials revealed any damaging results on any of the people, it will be discontinued”.
Regulatory approval needs to be obtained by the health facilities to get regulative authorization from the DCGI – Drug Controller General of India, and need to be registered on the Clinical Trial Registry of India (CTRI) for this.
4 of the hospitals have currently started the trial of the drugs.
She said, “We want as several patients as possible to be swiftly signed
up in the randomized controlled clinical trial to ensure that outcomes also can come out quickly” and the sample size from all clinical sites needs to be at the very least 1,500 in a total.Godbole said, “To produce sufficient strong evidence on their efficiency to treat COVID-19, patients are being enlisted in a number of nations in these clinical trials”.
She added, “The Solidarity Trial intends to quickly discover whether any one of the medicines improves survival or slows down the disease’s development. On emerging evidence, other medicines can be added.
The global health body donated drug remdesivir and Interferon beta-1a to India to perform clinical trials. An antiviral drug has been donated to the WHO by US-based pharma company Gilead Sciences, said Godbole.
According to the WHO website, over 100 nations are working together to discover reliable therapies immediately.
The trials will be periodically reviewed by global data safety and monitoring boards and accordingly inform WHO.
Author: Sruthi. S
