Gilead says Remdesivir Drug helped moderately ill Covid-19 patients

A California biotech company said on Monday that its experimental drug remdesivir improved symptoms when given for five days to moderately ill, hospitalised patients with Covid-19.

Gilead Sciences gave few details on Monday but said full results would soon be published in a medical journal.

Remdesivir is the only treatment that’s been shown in a rigorous experiment to help fight the coronavirus. A large study led by the National Institutes of Health recently found it could shorten average recovery time from 15 days to 11 days in hospitalised patients with severe disease.

The drug is given through an IV and is designed to interfere with an enzyme the virus uses to copy its genetic material. It’s approved for treating Covid-19 in Japan and is authorised for emergency use in the US for individual patients.

The company-led study involved nearly 600 patients who had moderate pneumonia but did not need oxygen support. All were randomly assigned to get five or ten days of the drug plus standard care, or usual care alone. Patients and their doctors knew who was getting what, which limits the objectivity of the results.

By the 11th day in the study, those on five days of remdesivir were 65% more likely to improve by at least one on a seven-point scale, Gilead said.

Ten days of treatment did not prove better than standard care alone.