US President Donald Trump has assailed the WHO as not responding quickly or aggressively enough, although critics say he is trying to deflect from his own response. The UN body said its emergency committee will meet Thursday for the first time since it declared coronavirus an international emergency 3 months ago. “We are all hoping – fervently hoping – that one or more of the treatments currently under observation and under trial will result in altering clinical outcomes” and reducing deaths, he said. “I think a lot more data will come out,” he told reporters. Senior WHO official Michael Ryan declined to weigh in on the latest findings Wednesday, saying he had not reviewed the complete study. Remdesivir failed in trials against the Ebola virus and a smaller study, released last week by the World Health Organization, found limited effects among patients in Wuhan, China, where the illness was first detected last year. The trial, which involved 1,063 people across 68 locations in the US, Europe and Asia, showed that “a drug can block this virus,” Fauci said. (READ: Coronavirus drugs: Who’s doing what, and when they might come)Īnthony Fauci, who oversaw the study, told reporters at the White House: “The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.”įauci, the veteran top US scientist in the fight against infectious diseases, likened the finding to the first retrovirals that worked, albeit with modest success, against HIV in the 1980s. In the first proof of successful treatment against the illness that has claimed more than 226,000 lives, a clinical trial of the drug remdesivir showed that patients recovered over 30% more quickly than those on a placebo.

The medical news was enough to propel a rebound on Wall Street even after data showed the pandemic had plunged the United States into its worst economic slump in a decade and Germany predicted its biggest recession since the aftermath of World War II.

WASHINGTON, USA – US scientists on Wednesday, April 29, hailed a potential breakthrough in the coronavirus fight as a trial showed patients responding to an antiviral drug, fueling global hopes for a return to normal.

Weather underground hail history