The health organization WHO advises countries to no longer use the virus inhibitor remdesivir in corona patients in hospitals. The agent, according to WHO, would have “no significant effect” on the health of corona patients, regardless of their condition. Remdesivir is also used in the Netherlands.
The WHO’s advice was published Friday in the British Medical Journal. It recommends that “remdesivir not be administered in addition to normal care for the treatment of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19, regardless of the severity of the disease”.
The anti-inflammatory was the first drug to be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved for the treatment of COVID-19.
In principle, the drug is only used in the Netherlands in corona patients with breathing problems who are in a nursing ward of a hospital. COVID-19 patients in intensive care are not given the drug.
RIVM manages the Dutch stock of the drug, which ran out last month. The European Commission purchases the anti-inflammatory agent centrally, after which it is distributed among member states.
The European Commission has purchased hundreds of thousands of doses of the drug from the manufacturer Gilead in recent months. It was originally developed as a medicine against the Ebola virus
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