The University of Virginia Health System has joined a national clinical trial testing a potential COVID-19 medication.

“I enrolled the first patient on the clinical trial for remdesivir,” Dr. Taison Bell, an infectious disease expert who specializes in critical care at the Charlottesville-based health system, told NNPA Newswire in an email.

Hospitalized adult patients with COVID-19 and significant symptoms – including difficulty breathing, using supplemental oxygen or needing a ventilator – can now choose to participate in the trial.

The trial will evaluate the safety and effectiveness of remdesivir, an anti-viral drug that has been tested in humans with the Ebola virus. It has shown promise in animal studies against Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which both are caused by different types of the coronavirus, U.Va. officials noted in a news release.

“Finding an effective treatment will be incredibly important in our battle against COVID-19,” said Dr. K. Craig Kent, U.Va.’s executive vice president for health affairs. “I am pleased that U.Va. is a part of this valuable study.”

Participants in the trial will be randomly assigned to either receive remdesivir or a placebo intravenously for as long as 10 days, according to the release. Trial participants and their doctors will not know whether patients are receiving the medication or a placebo.

Patients will otherwise receive the current standard of care for their symptoms. U.Va. physicians will assess trial participants each day for changes in their condition.

Data from all hospitals participating in the trial and an estimated 440 participants worldwide will be combined and analyzed about halfway through the trial’s enrollment period to determine if changes should be made to the test. The trial could stop if participants are not benefiting from remdesivir, or the trial could be changed to add another medication or therapy that could improve participants’ responses.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, is funding the study. Gilead Sciences Inc., which developed remdesivir, is supplying the medication for the study.