Remdesivir versus Standard of Care in Moderate to Severe COVID-19 Patients: A Retrospective Study

Abstract

Introduction: In December 2019, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), a novel coronavirus, was first identified as the cause of a respiratory illness designated Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Since then, several anti-viral drugs have been evaluated for the treatment of COVID-19, but none have shown any efficacy. The only drug which showed some efficacy was Remdesivir (RDV). Aim: To assess the effect and efficacy of RDV and to compare the outcome of patients who are receiving RDV and those receiving standard treatment protocol without RDV. Materials and Methods: A retrospective study was conducted. The data was collected from the case sheets of the case files of patients presenting to the Department of General Medicine Triage who were admitted from the month of July 2020 to December 2020 and analysis was done in January 2021. The method of sampling employed was a non-probability sequential sampling method. Results: Age and sex distributions were comparable in both the groups. The percentage of the patients who expired was 10% and 9% (n=10 and 9, respectively) in Non-RDV and RDV groups respectively, this was statistically insignificant (0.809).However, the duration of hospital stay in those who received RDV was 10 (9-12) days while those receiving standard of care without RDV was 12 (10-15) days (0.0018) which was statistically significant. Also, after a comparison between the two groups it was evident that there was a significant difference in inflammatory markers D-dimer and Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH) with p=0.001 and 0.029, respectively. Conclusion: Study concludes that there was no significant difference in outcome of patients who received RDV. However, the duration of hospital stay was found to be decreased in patients receiving RDV and also there was a significant improvement in inflammatory markers like LDH and D-dimer.