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Mudassir Ali
What is Remdesivir, and will the drug help to halt the COVID-19 pandemic?
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It messes with the virus’s ability to replicate.
Here’s a non-scientific explanation. The virus is comprised of proteins and rna. It enters a cell, and exposes its rna in such a way that the cell’s ribosome is triggered to use it to create proteins the virus needs, which proteins the virus uses to create the rna it needs, very ingenious.
Remdesivir creates molecules which look like the virus’s rna, só that when the virus is reassembled, it uses this fake rna, creating a non-virus. This reduces the number of real viruses creased, since a lot of the proteins are wasted because they’re re-assembled with the fake rna.
By decreasing the number of viruses, it makes it easier for the immune system to successfully deal with it.
It wouldn’t halt the pandemic, but help decrease the fatality rate and the amount of hospital resources needed.
Most of the drugs being tested appear to work in a similar way, by diminishing, or preventing, the virus from replicating.