Taiwan has asked the US-based drugmaker Gilead Sciences to reserve the nation doses of its new drug remdesivir, amid reports that the antiviral medication might be effective in treating the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said on Thursday.
Chen confirmed the request, and said that the drug — which is not yet licensed or approved in any nation — still requires government approval before it could be used.
Developed for use against the Ebola virus, remdesivir has garnered attention as a possible treatment for 2019-nCoV, following positive results from US and Chinese doctors who have administered the drug in clinical trials.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
On Friday last week, Gilead said it was working with Chinese authorities to test the drug on coronavirus patients.
National Taiwan University (NTU) Hospital last month reached out to Gilead before the Lunar New Year holiday and the company agreed to send doses of the drug as a charitable donation, NTU vice president Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳) said on Thursday.
Chang said the hospital then prepared application documents for the drug’s experimental use, including treatment plans and patient consent forms, which were submitted to the Ministry of Health and Welfare after gaining approval from the hospital’s ethics review committee.
Chang, who serves as Taipei-area director of the Centers for Disease Controls’ Communicable Disease Control Medical Network, did not give details of the agreement, such as how many doses of the drug would be sent or when they would arrive.
Some doctors have reported that remdesivir was beneficial in treating the related coronavirus Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) during a 2015 outbreak in South Korea, Chang said.
Despite its initial promise in stopping the reproduction of MERS and SARS in the respiratory tract, clinical trials ultimately found it to be less effective than other medications, and it was not developed for use on the mass market, Chang added.
As all of Taiwan’s current 2019-nCoV patients are in stable condition and only one has pneumonia, none require remdesivir at the moment, Chang said.
Doctors are treating the pneumonia patients with supportive care, which includes using supplemental oxygen to reduce breathing difficulties, Chang said.
As doctors have yet to find any drugs that are highly effective in treating the coronavirus, Chang said none of the patients have been treated with other antiviral medications.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater