Please, Help Northwell Health Find A COVID-19 Therapy.

By Karen and Erica

Lustre supporters, we are asking your help to support critical work in connection with finding therapies to address COVID-19. 

As you may know, Northwell Health, through the Katz Institute for Women’s Healh, has teamed with Lustre to provide advice and to make presentations about health issues relevant to Lustre ladies. Lustre is now asking its supporters to help fund clinical trials testing the efficacy of possible COVID-19 therapies to advance care for people in our communities. 

As New York State’s largest health care provider, Northwell Health is front and center in battling against the COVID-19 health crisis. Its vast network is working with state and local governments to respond to COVID-19. Northwell is currently taking care of more than 3,000 patients,  approximately 20% of NYS COVID-19 positive patients, 6.5% of US’s COVID-19 patients and 1.1% of the world’s COVID-19 population. Northwell’s president and CEO, Michael Dowling, is Governor Andrew Cuomo’s point person for developing a strategy to address the surge in COVID-19 patients. 

Northwell Health is testing therapies that will hopefully both lessen the impact of the virus on people who are sick, and also possibly provide a cure. Northwell has teamed up with Gilead Sciences, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi to identify effective treatments for COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized with moderate to severe conditions. Northwell Health is the first system in the United States to enroll a patient into the Regeneron anti-IL-6 COVID-19 trials. The goal of this trial is palliative–to improve recovery and speed discharge from hospitals. In addition, the Feinstein Institutes, Northwell’s research arm, is collaborating with Gilead Sciences and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to identify effective therapeutic treatments against COVID-19, treatments that might cure people who become sick. Three clinical trials are being offered to patients that have already been admitted to Northwell Health hospitals with moderate to severe COVID-19. These trials will explore the safety and efficacy of the human antibody, sarilumab, and the investigational antiviral drug, remdesivir (RDV). 

To hear more about the clinical trials, listen to the press conference announcing them, here or to the doctor who is in charge of the trials, here.

Northwell’s courageous doctors, nurses and health care providers are at work each day diagnosing, treating and preventing the spread of this outbreak. A gift to Northwell’s COVID-19 Emergency Fund today will make a big impact, helping to support the myriad needs to address this pandemic. Northwell is taking care of the largest database of positive covid patients in the country, increasing capacity by almost 50% at every hospital. All of these needs are unbudgeted, and they are doing everything in their power to take care of everyone. 

Please consider supporting Northwell’s COVID-19 efforts by making a contribution. To donate, please go here.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.