This could only have happened in the era of Twitter: when I posted my previous article on the ACTIV-6 trial on ivermectin, I came in contact with a participant from the ACTIV-6 trial. You heard that right. The contents of this article are coming… straight from the horse’s mouth.
The ACTIV-6 patient confirmed much of what we suspected about the trial:
The participant contacted the trial staff within 5 days after symptoms started. They were enrolled in the trial 7 days after initial symptoms. Official “day 1” in the trial was 10 days after symptom onset. The medicine arrived a full 11 days after symptoms started.
The patients were taken at their word that they had a positive test; a self-administered rapid antigen test was sufficient.
Most patients never saw the trial staff, and didn’t speak to them on the phone after the first few days.
Patients were asked which drug they preferred to randomize for, opening real questions with regard to the validity of the randomization process.
A $100 Amazon gift card was used as enticement to complete all the forms in the trial. (This was not advertised before signing up for the trial.)
The patient in this case participated in the ACTIV-6 600 arm—whose recruitment is completed but results have not yet been published—and is part of the same overall trial as the recently published ACTIV-6 400 study.