An ‘Unprecedented’ Effort to Stop the Coronavirus in Nursing Homes

Despite the obstacles, two companies, Regeneron and Eli Lilly, have forged ahead with clinical trials. The trial in nursing homes is pivotal to Eli Lilly’s effort to determine whether its version can stop the coronavirus.

“Some people ask, ‘If we have a vaccine, why do this?’” said Dr. Myron Cohen, a University of North Carolina researcher who proposed the trial. “But a vaccine will take a month to produce antibodies, and some populations need a more emergent intervention.”

But it is not easy to do a trial in nursing homes. Because the residents cannot be expected to travel to a clinic for an infusion and subsequent testing and monitoring, the clinical trial must to come to them.

Eli Lilly’s researchers are watching facilities in which a single case of Covid-19 appears after having no active cases for at least 14 days. Once the case is reported, a sort of medical SWAT team scrambles to the facility as quickly as possible.

A nursing supervisor at Heartland called Eli Lilly as soon as the home learned of the employee’s positive test. The team wasted no time getting to the facility.

The next day, medical personnel pulled up in two vehicles. One was a moving truck carrying infusion chairs, poles for intravenous infusions, bedside tables, and privacy screens. The other was an R.V. with an interior retrofitted as a mobile lab with infusion materials, a centrifuge, freezers and computers to transmit data.

The team quickly turned Heartland’s large dining room — which was not being used, because the pandemic had put a stop to communal dining — into an infusion center. The day after the medical team arrived, the first residents and staff who agreed to participate received infusions.