University of Illinois at Chicago
Covid-19 is not the first pandemic go-around for Richard Novak, MD. For more than 30 years, he has worked closely with HIV-positive patients. Today, as head of infectious diseases at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he has been running several research studies trying to find a drug to treat Covid-19.
Novak was the principal investigator on a phase 3 trial of remdesivir, a medication found to be effective against Covid-19. He is now involved in a second phase 3 trial to see if remdesivir works better in combination with a second drug, baricitinib. And he has started the first Covid-19 vaccine trial in Illinois.
Novak sees many parallels between HIV and Covid-19. “Early in the AIDS pandemic, we had no treatments. We were desperate to keep our patients alive, trying all kinds of treatments and therapies,” he says. In addition, “There was a terrible stigma against people with HIV/AIDS, and now there is a stigma against Covid patients.”
He’s continuing his quest for a Covid-19 treatment. “Other prevention strategies, more drugs, and treatment options that might be used as prevention will eventually bring this under control,” he says. “We will get closer to normal life.”