Trump at Walter Reed: President receives experimental drug Regeneron; Cook County Health also testing the possible coronavirus treatment
CHICAGO (WLS) -- As part of his COVID-19 treatment, President Donald Trump received the experimental drug Regeneron Friday; Cook County Health is currently seeking volunteers to participate in its clinical trials for the same treatment option.
Trump is waking up Saturday in the hospital out of what the White House is calling an "abundance of caution." He's at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The White House said he was experiencing mild symptoms from COVID-19.
He was taken to Walter Reed after suffering from a low-grade fever, chills, nasal congestion and a cough, multiple sources told ABC News.
The president is being treated with remdesivir and an experimental antibody cocktail from Regeneron, which is also being tested at Cook County Hospital.
"The idea is what they attach to that spike protein and prevent the virus from being able to replicate in the system," said Sybil Hosek, a clinical psychologist and principal investigator at Cook County Health. "So for somebody who has already been infected for early treatment, this gives them a boost of antibodies, particularly if their system doesn't launch its own robust attack against the virus. And that's the case of the president; he's getting this as an early treatment, potential early treatment for prevention."
Cook County Health is one of several major medical centers across the U.S. and the second site in Illinois to begin enrollment into the Phase III clinical trial, medical officials said. Cook County Health researchers are seeking asymptomatic, healthy adults who are close household contacts to an individual who has recently tested positive for COVID-19.
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The Regeneron clinical program consists of three separate study populations: hospitalized COVID-19 patients, non-hospitalized symptomatic COVID-19 patients and uninfected people with close exposure to a COVID-19 patient or living with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. Cook County Health is seeking adults who have not tested positive for COVID-19 but live with an individual who was recently diagnosed with COVID-19.
Study participants must be adults over the age of 18 and in good health, be asymptomatic with sustained close exposure with an individual who has tested positive for COVID-19, live and remain in the same household with the person who has COVID-19 and be willing to consent to and comply with study visits and related procedures.
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Participants will be asked to participate in one initial and two follow-up visits at the clinic. Other visits will be conducted by home health care teams.
For more information, visit regeneron.com/covid19.
Cook county health's lead researcher on the Regeneron study said the antibody treatment is a temporary fix and cannot replace a vaccine.
