With fewer new COVID-19 cases, recruiting study patients becomes more difficult, says analyst

Though the reporting of fewer new cases of COVID-19 infection is clearly good news in terms of stemming the pandemic, this poses a big obstacle for testing of potential treatments and vaccines.

An example of this was the suspension of Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir testing last week in China among patients with mild symptoms of the new coronavirus, noted analytics firm GlobalData’s associate director of infectious diseases Michael Breen.

“As the Covid-19 outbreak becomes controlled, we must acknowledge that developers will increasingly face difficulties in recruiting infected patients for trials. In fact, as Gilead experienced in China, companies may have plans in place to initiate a trial, but when it comes to begin enrollment, there may be insufficient numbers of patients to power the study,” said Dr Breen.