After Gilead Science’s anti-viral drug remdesivir showed signs that it could become a standard of care to fight Covid-19 pandemic, a US government disease expert welcomed the key clinical trial results. India, too, may pin its hopes on the drug in a bid to treat rising Covid-19 patients.
Gilead Science’s antiviral drug remdesivir gained traction after the US government’s top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci called the early results of a key clinical trial as “good news” in the fight against novel coronavirus.
Preliminary results showed that patients given remdesivir recovered 31 per cent faster than those given a placebo.
Also read: Gilead says remdesivir shows improvement in Covid-19 patients when used early
US President Donald Trump called the remdesivir drug trials “a stepping stone in moving faster in the direction of making a vaccine”.
Fauci said, “FDA is working with Gilead to figure out mechanisms to make this easily available to those who need it.”
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a wing of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US, said early results from its 1,063 patient trials show that hospitalised Covid-19 patients who were given remdesivir recovered in 11 days, compared to 15 days for those who were given a placebo.
The study also showed that 8 per cent of patients who were given the drug died, as compared to 11.6 per cent in the placebo group. However, the difference was not statistically significant so may not be due to Gilead’s drug, they added.
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