And how long can this go on for joining us now is the person leading the charge to try to find a solution here in the U.

S.

Dr.

Andre Khalil from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Dr.

Cleo, First off, I know you're busy, so thank you for taking the time to speak to us.

Thanks for having me.

How far along are we in developing a drug to treat Cove in 19 So way decide to take a little bit off a different approach.

It's time we designed the clinical trial to be available to different drugs.

So we the trial that we designed with the National Institutes of Health and I age is a trial That will be what he called randomized adaptive trials.

So the trial will be able to test several different drugs sequentially.

The first drug tests is from that severe.

So this is the medication that has already eh Track record off a viral replication inhibitions.

So we looked into in vitro and animal studies on found that his medication has this ability to inhibit the virus applications.

So the idea here is to test this medication is the 1st 1 in the trials.

So half of the patients we receive rendez severe and the other half is going to receive the placebo.

And the idea here is to run this trial as fast as possible to find if this medication works.

If this medication works, we're gonna we're gonna work in what's called an adaptive process.

Theme medication will be transferred to the control arm and we're gonna bring a new medication.

And that's the second medication.

And then we can.

That's the third medication so forth.

So the idea here is to have this clinical trial running a CZ long as possible.

We have now a planter unfriendlies.

Three years on, we're gonna test the multiple drugs.

Hopefully gonna find a one or more therapies that can.

I can just improve the clinical symptoms and the survival of this patient with severe Colby 19.

Very important to mention that trial really is focused on the patients with a moderate and severe disease at you know, as you know, 80% 80 to 90% of the patients today we'll have just a mild disease.

They will basically get cured just on their own.

They will not need any specific medications.

The focus off this clinical trial is to try to help the people that need the most people that they're gonna have the severe disease, a disease that affects the lungs and can cause pneumonia.

So what can you tell us about the participants in this trial as well as the Corona virus pace?

Since that you're already treating.

So the you know, I cannot tell any specifics about the first patient run the trial, but I can tell that the patient it keeps improving on actual was discharged from from the bike on time units back to the quarantine yesterday.

So meaning that the patient really had a significant improvement being the clinical trial we assign mentioned before the randomized trial double blind.

So we don't know which medication for the patient received the placebo onboard the active drug, but the patient improved and a patient was discharged from the hospital.

We have other 14 patients that are in the quarantine.

That means they do not require to be admitted to the hostel because they don't have any severe disease.

They'll have mild disease.

So at this point, patients are doing well.

They're improving, but we're observing very carefully because what we've noticed with this infection that sometimes it takes about a week we can have for the disease progress and get into the lungs and cars in the morning.

So we have to keep very close attention to each enough.

This patient's that's good to know.

And I know that your facility also dealt with the Ebola virus outbreak in 2014 so far.

How does your experience with these two scenarios compare?

I think they compare differently, but way we learned so much in 2014th through both the clinic respects and research respects.

For instance, the trial that we have another clinical trial that we have now is basically is being built on what to learn with the trials that we did during the bullet breaks.

So we're much better doing this type of research.

Now they is trying to bring the therapist because we were learning on the time that we went through the 1004th off brake.

So definitely it's a learning curve.

But the lessons we learned in starting 14th are definitely being very useful for what's happening today.

All right.

Dr.

Andre Khalil from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

We appreciate your time, doctor as well of the work that you're doing.

Thank you.

Hi, everyone.

George Stephanopoulos here.

Thanks for checking on ABC News YouTube channel.

If you'd like to get more video show highlights and watch live event coverage, click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel.

And don't forget the download.

The ABC News After breaking news alerts Thanks for watching.