St. Mary Gets COVID-19 Treatment Drug Remdesivir

LANGHORNE, PA — St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne is one of 51 hospitals in Pennsylvania that has received Remdesivir, a drug used to treat patients with COVID-19.

St. Mary has received 36 vials of the "investigational" antiviral medication, which has received an Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to help those hospitalized during the coronavirus pandemic.

St. Mary has averaged about 68 coronavirus patients over the past seven days, with an average of about six of them on ventilators, according to statistics released Wednesday by the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

With nearly 58,000 cases of the coronavirus, Pennsylvania is among a handful of states that have received the medication from the federal government. The first shipment of 1,200 doses of Remdesivir was delivered to Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

The medication is given via IV once per day for up to 10 days and may help decrease the amount of coronavirus in the body, enabling a shorter recovery time, state health officials said.

Preliminary results of a clinical trial by The National Institutes of Health and manufacturer Gilead Sciences suggested the medication enabled a faster recovery, "although the data was not sufficient to determine if the drug was associated with lower mortality," the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a news release.

"We now have solid data showing that Remdesivir diminishes to a modest degree the time to recovery for people hospitalized with COVID-19," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, said in a statement.

See the full list of 51 Pennsylvania hospitals who now have the medication.