SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - A San Diego doctor is leading a new national study that tests drugs designed to help coronavirus patients.
If you tested positive for coronavirus this summer, there was nowhere for you to go unless you were sick enough to end up in a hospital bed. The ACTIV-2 Study hopes to keep that from happening.
"So this trial is specifically designed to find those agents to keep people from going to the hospital," Dr. Davey Smith said. He is the Chief of Infectious Diseases at UC San Diego and the Protocol Chair for the study.
"If your symptoms started within ten days and your test is positive in seven days, then you are eligible for the study," Dr. Smith said.
UCSD had their first patient mid-September. There are two test sites, one at UCSD and another at Kaiser's Zion Medical Center. Dr. Smith hopes to expand to six test sites.
"We want to test eight drugs over the next year, maybe more. There are lots of pharmaceutical companies making better and better drugs," he said the goal is to keep people healthy.
"If I were to get sick and I would have something to prevent me from getting sicker that's number 1. Then the next good thing is maybe instead of having an infusion we'll have a pill or we'll have an inhaler."
He said they need 2,000 participants to test each drug and will use a placebo to measure it's effectiveness.
A national study, led by San Diego.
"Hopefully we can do our home city proud," Dr. Smith said.