Clinical Trial Sites Compete for Covid-19 Patients, Study Staff

Competition over patients and staff for Covid-19 clinical trials is slowing down large-scale research to figure out the best treatment options for the disease.

A surplus of smaller trials in the U.S. are using up the resources needed for studies that have a better chance of yielding meaningful results, health officials and some researchers say.

“I run into this problem every day,” said Davey Smith, head of infectious diseases and global public health at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine who is co-chair of an NIH-funded Covid-19 treatment trial. “It slows us down because we’re just ...