Gilead Sciences Inc said that its antiviral drug remdesivir showed improvement in patients with moderate COVID-19 in a late-stage study. Remdesivir is being closely watched after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization last month, citing results from another study run by the National Institutes of Health that showed the drug reduced hospitalization stays by 31%, or about four days, compared to a placebo. Those results were seen as particularly significant as there are no approved drugs or vaccines for the new coronavirus, although many medicines approved for other conditions, as well as experimental treatments, are being tested to see if they may alter the course of COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. The new results announced by Gilead on Monday are from a study designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of 5- and 10-day treatment with remdesivir in addition to standard of care for patients with moderate COVID-19, compared with standard care alone. At Day 11, a higher proportion of patients in the 5-day treatment group achieved improvement in clinical status versus the standard of care group, Gilead said. The drugmaker said the odds of improvement in clinical status with the 10-day treatment course of remdesivir versus standard of care were also favorable, trending toward but not reaching statistical significance.
