Friday afternoon, October 2, President Trump departed the White House for the Walter Reed Medical Center. The move was made “out of an abundance of caution” as termed by Donald Trump, Jr., on an appearance with Tucker Carlson on Fox News. Despite the seemingly alarming transfer, the President’s son assured Carlson’s viewers that the president continued working and was doing well.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany took to Twitter late to provide an update from the president’s physician, Sean Conley. In a new memo to McEnany, Conley elaborated on the president’s condition and treatment.
“This afternoon, in consultation with specialists from Walter Reed and Johns Hopkins University, I recommended movement of the President up to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for further monitoring,” Conley wrote. “This evening I am happy to report that the President is doing very well. He is not requiring any supplemental oxygen, but in consultation with specialists we have elected to initiate Remdesivir therapy. He has completed his first dose and is resting comfortably.”
Before leaving the White House for Walter Reed, the President posted a video update to Twitter thanking Americans for their support and reporting that he was feeling well.
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“I want to thank everybody for the tremendous support,” the President said. “I’m going to Walter Reed hospital. I think I’m doing very well. But, we’re going to make sure that things work out. The First Lady is doing very well. So, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I will never forget it.”
Also on the evening of Friday, October 2, the CEO of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals appeared on CNN, interviewed by anchor Chris Cuomo. Regeneron’s Leonard Schleifer said during that interview that the President’s Remdesivir treatment would be supplemented by an experimental drug.
Describing Schleifer’s interview on CNN, Newsweek reported:
During a Friday night interview with CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, Schleifer said that Trump would be taking a drug with monoclonal antibodies that is still in trials. Schleifer said the drug will be administered to Trump under a certain Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provision that allows people who are not in a clinical trial to gain access to a drug under something called “compassionate use,” basically a single-patient experiment.
Though Schleifer, reportedly, did not name the experimental drug that would be used, Regeneron has been developing an experimental treatment using monoclonal antibodies. Called REGN-COV2, the company said in a press release on September 29 that it has trial data for the drug “showing it reduced viral load and the time to alleviate symptoms in non-hospitalized patients.”
George D. Yancopoulos, Regeneron Chief Scientific Officer, described the results obtained using the company’s experimental drug in more detail.
“The greatest treatment benefit was in patients who had not mounted their own effective immune response, suggesting that REGN-COV2 could provide a therapeutic substitute for the naturally-occurring immune response,” Yancopoulos said. “These patients were less likely to clear the virus on their own, and were at greater risk for prolonged symptoms. We are highly encouraged by the robust and consistent nature of these initial data, as well as the emerging well-tolerated safety profile, and we have begun discussing our findings with regulatory authorities while continuing our ongoing trials. In addition to having positive implications for REGN-COV2 trials and those of other antibody therapies, these data also support the promise of vaccines targeting the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.”
According to Newsweek, CNN’s Cuomo asked Regeneron CEO Schliefer about the wisdom of using an experimental drug to treat the President.
“During the interview,” Newsweek said, “Cuomo mentioned that John Mellors, Head of Infectious Diseases at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said, ‘Why would you give the President of the United States an experimental therapy that could make things worse?’”
In response, Schliefer said: “We have lots of evidence from animal studies, primate studies and thousands of patients now enrolled in our trial that this drug class and this specific cocktail appears safe.”
Schliefer also asserted that the experimental drug he was describing would help the president and that the outlook was good.
“He’s not seriously ill now,” Schleifer told Cuomo, according to Newsweek. “He’s not on a respirator, his life is not threatened … [but] we can help the patient immune system win the race [against the virus] by basically giving them an immune response in a vial. We’re giving actual antibodies.”
