Gilead drug to be given to Covid-19 patients this week

Gilead will get its drug remdesivir to Covid-19 patients as soon as this week after getting US backing for emergency use.

The drug has shown positive results in helping hospitalised patients recover more quickly.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the drug under an emergency use authorisation, a step by which the agency can bring products to market without full data on their safety and efficacy.

A US-led study showed that patients who got the drug recovered in an average of 11 days, while those who get a placebo recovered in 15 days.

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An effective therapy against the viral infection is seen as a key bridge between the ongoing outbreak, which has infected more than a million people in the US and longer-term efforts to either stamp out the virus or come up with an effective vaccine.

Those measures are all considered crucial by government and health officials to fully reopening the economy and ending social distancing measures that have resulted in millions of lost jobs, closed schools and sent the financial markets through the most turbulent period since the 2008 financial crisis.

Gilead has about 50,000 courses of the drug ready to distribute.

The company has been in talks with the FDA about how the drug will be used, and said it expects the antiviral medication to be a backbone of therapy as well as proof that other drugs can target the virus. It’s also examining how to increase manufacturing of the drug. It’s also started to face questions about how, or if, it will make money on the product.

After reporting quarterly earnings on Thursday, financial analysts on a call with the company asked what its long-term plans were for the drug after it dispenses an early round of the treatment for free.

“There has been no other time like this in the history of the planet,” chief executive Daniel O’Day said on the call. “There is no rule book out there, other than that we need to be thoughtful about how we can make sure we provide access of our medicines to patients around the globe and do that in a sustainable way for the company, for shareholders, and we acknowledge that.”

- Bloomberg