NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Vanderbilt University Medical Center is now enrolling volunteers for a clinical trial of treatments for COVID-19 in the outpatient setting.
Vanderbilt explains with this national trial, they are looking into ways to treat patients who have COVID-19 and keep them out of the hospitals when infected. Currently, there is no FDA approved treatment for COVID-19.
"I've been at Vanderbilt over 40 years, studying infectious disease for over three decades and I've never seen anything like this and our desperate need to respond to this," said Dr. David Haas, professor of Medicine and principal investigator for the study at VUMC.
Volunteers will be compensated. Volunteers should be tested for the virus within seven days of the study and being symptomatic.
In the first stage, 220 volunteers who have symptoms of COVID-19 and test positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but are not hospitalized, will be randomly assigned to receive the study drug or placebo. If the study drug shows positive results and meets specific criteria for further evaluation, it will advance to the second stage of ACTIV-2, a phase 3 clinical trial, to test whether it can prevent hospitalization and death in non-hospitalized adults with COVID-19. The phase 3 stage will enroll an additional 1,780 volunteers.
"This is part of what's called operation warp speed," said Dr. Haas. "We want to do things as quickly as we can but also safely in a way that generates meaningful information."
Volunteers must be at least 18 years old to participate in the study.
For more information about the study, go to the national study website. Anyone interested in joining the study, can call the hotline at 1-877-345-8813 to connect with the ACTIV-2 Team at Vanderbilt.
