The
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted authorisation to Gilead
Sciences Inc. for emergency use of its experimental antiviral drug remdesivir
to treat patients with Covid-19, President Donald Trump announced on
Friday.
US medical officials have announced
evidence from a trial that remdesivir helped patients with serious cases of Covid-19
recover faster.
Trump has been a vocal supporter of
remdesivir as a possible way to bring the novel coronavirus pandemic under
control. Nearly 65,000 Americans have died in the global crisis.
Initially developed by Gilead Sciences
Inc. to combat Ebola, the treatment has proven to be effective against the
various coronaviruses that have emerged since the early 2000s.
Gilead said on Wednesday the drug had
helped improve outcomes for patients with Covid-19, the disease caused by the
coronavirus, and provided data suggesting it worked better when given earlier
in the course of infection.
The closely watched drug has moved
financial markets in recent weeks, following the release of several studies
that painted a mixed picture of its effectiveness.
Vice President Mike Pence said 1.5 million
vials would start being distributed to hospitals on Monday.
The data, Fauci told reporters earlier
this week, "shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive
effect in diminishing the time to
recovery" of Covid-19 patients.
Different results in China
But a team of Chinese researchers
published much less encouraging conclusions in the British medical journal The
Lancet.
Their experiment, conducted on 237
severely ill patients in 10 hospitals in Hubei province (the region where the
epidemic originated), appeared to indicate that remdesivir makes little
difference. "Unfortunately, our study shows that this treatment does not
provide any specific benefit compared to a placebo," wrote Bin Cao, the
main author of the article.
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