Remdesivir: US Allows Emergency Use of Experimental Drug for Coronavirus

US regulators have allowed the emergency use of the experimental drug remdesivir, which appears to help some coronavirus patients recover faster. It is the first drug shown to help fight COVID-19, which has killed more than 230,000 people worldwide, The Guardian reports in the article by Joan E Greve and Julia Carrie Wong. 

Donald Trump announced the news on Friday at the White House alongside Stephen Hahn, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner, who said the drug would be available for patients hospitalized with COVID-19, the publication further reads.  

The President said the approval represented a “very promising situation” in the country’s fight against coronavirus, and Dr Deborah Birx added, “I think this really illustrates what can happen in such a short time.”

The emergency approval comes days after Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, expressed cautious optimism about the results of a remdesivir drug trial.

“The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery,” Fauci said earlier this week. “What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus.”

The FDA acted after preliminary results from a government-sponsored study showed that Gilead Sciences’s remdesivir shortened the time to recovery by 31%, or about four days on average, for hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Fauci said the drug would become a new standard of care for severely ill COVID-19 patients like those in this study. The drug has not been tested on people with a milder illness.

Source: The Guardian

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