Many Patients Have Improved During Treatment

Interview Dr Leila Hojat, principal investigator, Covid - 19 clinical trials, University Hospitals, US

- Shyla Jovitha Abraham

In the frantic race between potential cures for Covid-19, the antiviral drug remdesivir has pulled ahead. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved emergency use of the investigational drug on critically ill patients.

Manufactured by Gilead Sciences, remdesivir was originally developed to treat Ebola. The intravenous drug blocks an enzyme in the invading virus and prevents it from replicating itself.

The FDA approval was based on early results of an ongoing clinical trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which included 1,063 patients from different sites, including the US, Europe and Asia. The drug was shown to shorten the time to recovery by 31 per cent in some patients.

Gilead Sciences is now in talks with generic drug makers in India and Pakistan to produce remdesivir for developing countries.

The company also released preliminary results from its Phase 3 SIMPLE (shockless implant evaluation) trial that showed that patients who received a shorter, five-day treatment using remdesivir achieved similar clinical improvement as patients who received a 10-day one.

Early results also showed that patients who received the drug within 10 days of symptom onset fared better than those who got it later. Gilead Sciences’s press release said, “By day 14, 62 per cent of patients treated early were able to be discharged from hospital, compared with 49 per cent of patients who were treated late.”

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, “What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus. The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.”