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So far in the pandemic, support for research on drug repurposing -- particularly for inexpensive generics -- has not played a huge role in finding new treatments for COVID-19, but that appears to be changing.
Critics charge that drug repurposing is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It does not always work, and can raise false hopes and waste resources. In a March 7 interview with
60 Minutes, for instance, NIH director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, said drug repurposing "is only going to work if you're kind of lucky, because you're basically picking things that were developed for a different disease."