Live on Bloomberg TV

00:00Jason I want to use a phrase from Dr. Fouchier yesterday. But take it across all of our medicine of this crisis which is proof of concept. And I don't want to talk about a drug. I don't want to talk about the idea that we're going to go at warp speed and find some miracle drug. I want to talk about the proof of concept in the halls of these hospitals. Then the nurses the doctors. What's the proof of concept you're learning about caring for people ill with this virus . Viola I think there are several. First and foremost is we've got a great data about the way we position patients that will actually help improve oxygen saturation or the amount of oxygen in the blood. It can actually slow down if a patient's progressing toward the need for ventilation by placing them on their stomach. We call that prone position or probing the patients. We can do that before a patient gets ventilated. We can do that after a patient gets ventilated. It actually helps to by gravity improve the amount of oxygen in a patient's blood . So that's one thing. The second thing and I think more importantly what Dr. Fauci is referring to in this proof of concept is do we have any drug that shows it can help improve the way it responds or it causes the virus to respond in the body. And that I think is more what Dr. Apology is speaking to in his comments yesterday. The proof of concept that we now share a single drug that may offer a benefit . What is our proof of concept right now with our testing. It seems to be complex. People talk about the swabs and the rest of it is our testing up to proof of concept level . Well it will certainly when we when we talk about proof of concept it simply means that we have you know we've theorized an issue. And when we understand that there is a at least something that gives us an idea that the hypothesis we originally proposed is actually has merit. Right. And that's the proof of concept. So right now our proof of concept is that we can stand up across the United States without the help of the federal government you know testing and we can stand that testing up. You know it takes it's a slow process. It's their supply chain. It's used. But we are now testing across the United States you know hundreds of thousands of people a day . That being said it's it remains a very slow process . So we do need to scale up. And the administration's estimate of testing 2 percent of the general population per day with you know we've heard estimates that that would take us approximately four years to get to the right level of testing that we need . So we definitely know that we need to speed up our testing capacity need to speed up the number of people being tested . Dr. Farley what is it. What are you most hopeful about right now. I know that there are a couple of clinical trials actually showing that REM does a year could be working. How long until we have an almost certain answer on what drugs can help us fight this pandemic . Certainly so I understand you know that the data that came out from the NIH yesterday was an interim analysis. And basically what that means is that there is a data safety and monitoring board that's independent of the investigative team. They look at the data and they've done that. And in that interim analysis there is a statistical benefit in terms of recovery time. It's a four day benefit. So patients who received the drug within then severe received 11 day overall times resolutions whereas people who receive placebo was a 15 day time to resolution. Now that's our first guys as we were saying before proof of concept of the drug may have some level of benefit when it comes to survival. There was a trend toward survivability that was not exactly statistically significant at this point. Meaning that you know that the metric we look at as scientists to say is this different. But one drug a person's drug B. And the answer to that is right now it was it appears that it's moving in that direction but it was not yet statistically different. But the data what the data did show was that 8 percent mortality in the random severe arm versus eleven point six percent mortality in the placebo arm. So that is at least some benefit that we can see mathematically emerging .

No schedule data available.

Coronavirus Lessons Learned in Patient Care: Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins University Professor of Nursing Jason Farley explains what has been learned about treating Covid-19 patients, the need to increase testing in the United States, and signs of hope in batting the coronavirus pandemic. He speaks on "Bloomberg Surveillance." The Bloomberg School of Public Health is supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology
The only daily news program focused exclusively on technology, innovation and the future of business from San Francisco. Hosted by Emily Chang.
More episodes and clips