Will County Gazette

A Joliet hospital will be using a new triple-drug therapy to treat patients with COVID-19 as the FDA has approved the antiviral Remdesivir to treat the virus in emergency situations. 

Amita Health Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet ordered the medicine for the triple-drug therapy and should be receiving them soon, according  to the Herald-News.

“We’re going to try to get that going this week,” Dr. John Walsh, medical director and pulmonologist at the hospital, said. 

While Remdesivir is available for use, St. Joseph's said it wouldn't be using it to treat coronavirus right now, according to the Herald-News. Instead, the hospital is using interferon beta-1b, lopinavir–ritonavir and ribavirin. A study in Lancet showed these drugs combined could reduce coronavirus symptoms. Interferon beta-1b can suppresses the immune system,  while the other two are antivirals.

The combination of these drugs were used in Hong Kong for patients "who weren’t very sick," Walsh told the Herald-News. “As a matter of fact, they were often patients that were sent home from the ER department." 

But he said the drugs still reduced the "viral load," according to the Herald-News.  

“It offers us an option to intervene earlier than we typically have done,” Walsh said. "This therapy we’re talking about would be given to patients early in the disease, within the first week or so, and with minimal symptoms."

Walsh said the hospital isn't using Remdesivir because they weren't chosen for some of the initial 1.4 million tablets Gilead Sciences produced.

“The company gave control to the federal government and they had to choose where it would be sent,” Walsh told the Herald-News. “And we just didn’t get chosen.”

But the drug should be available in the area in the future, Walsh said. 

“We just don’t know how long down the road as it has to be manufactured and distributed,” Walsh said. “But it’s probably many weeks, if not months, away."