Minnesota gets first shipment of remdesivir
One vial of the drug Remdesivir lies during a press conference about the start of a study with the Ebola drug Remdesivir in particularly severely ill patients at the University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE) in Hamburg, northern Germany on April 8, 2020, a ((Photo by ULRICH PERREY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) / Getty Images)
ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - Minnesota health officials say they got 1,200 vials of remdesivir, the drug that shows promise as a treatment for coronavirus, from the federal government on Saturday.
Another smaller shipment of 400 vials is expected Tuesday.
Health officials distributed it over the weekend to health care facilities to treat patients with severe cases. It's a 10-day course of 11 vials per patient. Patients with highest priority have lab-confirmed cases and have been on a ventilator for five days or less, health officials said.
A Rosemount woman diagnosed with COVID-19 was part of a national remdesivir trial and improved within days of using the treatment. At time, she did not know if she had been a placebo or remdesivir, but she later told FOX 9 the trial organizers confirmed to her that she received the drug.