My congressional testimony on COVID

Beyond the curve: Dr. Peter Lurie's COVID-19 blog

Today I had the opportunity to testify before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Science, Space, and Technology Committee. The topic was “Repurposing Therapeutic Drugs for COVID-19; Research Challenges and Opportunities.”

In the testimony, I summarized the appeal of repurposed drugs (drugs that are approved for other conditions, but might be effective for COVID-19). I then described how two repurposed drugs, hydroxychloroquine and famotidine, had been, in the first instance, hyped by the President but proved ineffective and, in the second, the subject of irregular contracting processes. I then went on to point out that the drugs that have shown promise in the pandemic, remdesivir and dexamethasone, had demonstrated their effectiveness in government-funded randomized, controlled trials.

You can watch the recorded hearing here; my testimony appears at 15:30, and I appear again in the Question and Answer session that follows the witnesses' statements. Readers of this blog will recognize some of the sentiments expressed!