A 25-year-old New Jersey man is fighting for his life in a coma after he tested positive for the CCP virus, but a lab lost his test—delaying his treatment, according to his family.
Jack Allard has been on a ventilator in intensive care for the past week or so after he was placed in a medically induced coma, said his mother, Genny Allard.
His family said that he had no underlying health problems and was described as in good health.
“My son is healthy, no preexisting conditions and he’s 25—this virus is really dangerous and now he is very, very sick,” Genny Allard told the news outlet. She said he suffered from a fever after he continued to work in Manhattan, where thousands of CCP virus cases have been confirmed.
“He shouldn’t have been in his office that week before he got sick,” Genny Allard added of her son. “He never vaped, he never smoked,” she explained. “He took his health very seriously. I mean, he’s an athlete.”
Initially, the family believed that he suffered from a kidney infection and didn’t suspect it was the CCP virus.
Allard’s case drew the attention of elected officials, including Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.). “Somehow they lost his test and it cost all those days,” Gottheimer said of his case, ABC7 reported. “Inexcusable.”
Both he and Allard’s family are pushing to get the 25-year-old the anti-viral drug remdesivir, which was used to treat Ebola patients in 2014.
“We’ve been working with the FDA and the drug company to get the drug to him ... hopefully within the next number of hours,” Gottheimer said.
Dr. Laila Woc-Colburn, an infectious disease professor with Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, told PIX11 that the drug appears to have some promise.
“Remdesivir is one of the anti-virals that has been shown to limit the viral activity,” Woc-Colburn said. “It’s being studied at 75 sites globally and lots of sites in the United States.”