Experimental coronavirus drug remdesivir is showing promise in clinical trials by helping get coronavirus patients out of the hospital quicker, but it isn’t a cure for the disease, Axios reports.
“Remdesivir is a real drug for COVID ... but again, not a silver bullet,” Umer Raffat, a pharmaceutical analyst at Evercore ISI, told investors on Wednesday.
According to preliminary data released Wednesday from the National Institutes of Health, which is conducting a clinical trial of the drug, COVID-19 patients who received remdesivir recovered faster.
“Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo,” the report states. “Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo.”
Developed by Gilead Sciences, Inc., remdesivir is an experimental antiviral treatment for COVID-19 administered via daily infusion for 10 days.
But experts caution against getting too excited about the drug.
According to Axios, the primary outcome was changed during the trial, and a separate randomized trial concluded the drug “does little, if anything to combat the virus.”
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