White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci finds the data on remdesivir as a tool for coronavirus treatment "quite good news."
During a White House briefing on Wednesday, Dr. Fauci lauded the results of the trial testing of remdesivir as cure for coronavirus patients.
He said that Gilead Sciences’ antiviral drug sets a new standard of care for COVID-19 patients.
Dr. Fauci told reporters that the data manifested a “clear-cut positive effect in diminishing time to recover.”
Moreover, the top health expert said that the average time of recovery for patients taking remdesivir was 11 days. Those in the placebo group had 15 days. He emphasized that the mortality benefit of remdesivir “has not yet reached statistical significance.”
Findings magnified a survival benefit. It has a mortality rate of 8% for the group taking remdesivir against 11.6% for the placebo group. These figures came out of a statement from the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday.
“This will be the standard of care,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said. “When you know a drug works, you have to let people in the placebo group know so they can take it.”
“What it has proven is a drug can block this virus,” he said.
US health officials are gearing up to present the full results of a drug trial held by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases later Wednesday. Meanwhile, Gilead Sciences announced earlier that the study had met its main goal but did not give more details.
Based on the preliminary results of Gilead's study, at least 50% of the patients who took a five-day dosage of remdesivir improved. The clinical trial examined 397 patients with severe cases of COVID-19. The severe study is “single-arm.” This means it did not evaluate the drug against a control group of patients who did not take the drug.
Availability of remdisivir
The Food and Drug Administration is currently in “sustained and ongoing” discussions with Gilead regarding the availability of remdesivir. According to FDA senior advisor Michael Felberbaum, they working to make the drug available to COVID-19 patients “as quickly as possible, as appropriate."
Shares of Gilead rose by more than 5% at close and by more than 2% in extended hours trading.
The coronavirus pandemic already infected more than 3.1 million people worldwide and killed 217,569 as of Wednesday, based on the data by Johns Hopkins University. US health officials stress that vaccine development will take at least 12 to 18 months.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump touted remdesivir as a potential treatment for the virus. Several studies continue to evaluate the effectiveness of the drug in blocking the coronavirus. However, it is not yet a proven treatment.
Remdesivir is a promising drug for SARS and MERS. Coronaviruses caused these diseases too. US, China, and other countries are using remdesivir in hopes that the drug can minimize the duration of COVID-19 in patients.
Fauci previously pointed out that the US “could be in for a bad fall” if researchers do not detect an effective treatment to combat the coronavirus by then.
Covid-19 is “not going to disappear from the planet,” he said.
