Hopes are high for antiviral drug after a clinical trial showed promise, but the benefits may be limited, experts say.
Two months ago, virtually no one had heard of remdesivir. But now the antiviral drug is on people’s lips around the world — including Dr. Anthony Fauci’s. The nation’s top infectious disease specialist says the experimental treatment can help some seriously ill COVID-19 patients recover more quickly. And that’s raising a host of questions about the medication, ranging from its clinical benefits to its potential cost.
Remdesivir (pronounced rem-des-eh-veer) is an antiviral medication developed by the pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences, which originally developed it to treat Ebola and other deadly viruses. Preliminary data from an international COVID-19 drug trial „shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery,“ Fauci told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.
Still, experts say remdesivir is likely to play only one part in the broader public health response to the coronavirus, while its commercial importance to Gilead remains to be determined, even as enthusiastic investors drove up its stock price nearly 10% in recent days.
„We’ve characterized remdesivir as an important part of the public health solution,“ said Jim Birchenough, a Wells Fargo analyst who covers Gilead Sciences. „There are hundreds of trials going on evaluating other therapeutics. We think this could be just the beginning.“
So what exactly is remdesivir? Read on.
The drug trial, which involved over 1,000 hospitalized patients in the U. S., Germany, Denmark, Spain, Greece and other countries, reduced recovery time for COVID-19 patients from 15 days to 11 days, Fauci said.
