White House coronavirus coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx is revealing that mistakes were made in the government’s decision making that led to errors in the allocation of the drug Remdesivir, which is currently being touted as a potential treatment for coronavirus.
According to an email Birx sent to members of the coronavirus task force and senior White House officials including infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a review of the decision-making will take place, according to The Wall Street Journal, who was read the email by an official.
Birx said it will be reviewed in order to pinpoint where the “misalignment” occurred.
“We can later review the decision-making process, the lack of engagement of Task Force, and the methodology and analysis used by the data and modeling group that resulted in the misalignment of the therapeutic and on-the-ground current need in the first shipment so we can be assured this doesn’t occur in the future,” Dr. Birx said in the email from May 7.
Two days after Birx’s email, the government implemented changes to how the drug is allocated. In a statement released on Saturday, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed states would now be in charge of the allocation of the drug.
The department said the government will be shipping the drug to states and then states would distribute the drug to health systems on an as-needed basis.
Birx’s email surfaces approximately two weeks after the Food and Drug Administration granted an emergency authorization for the drug on May 1. The decision was made after a placebo-controlled, randomized trial showed significantly positive results for the drug, as previously reported on IJR.
At the time, Fauci said, “Although the results were positive from a significant, statistical standpoint, they were modest.”
Fauci also noted that while the drug was still being studied in clinical trials, the results showed that the drug signaled an important step in the right direction.
Fauci said, “Its good news but I was very serious when I said, ‘This is not the total answer, by any means, but it’s a very important first step.”
