A much-hyped 'Remdesivir' fails to reduce mortality, hospital stay of COVID-19 patients: Study

Remdesivir, once of the earliest touted drug authorized for treatment of COVID-19 fails to prevent death among patients, claims a World Health Organization sponsored study.

The study was conducted in 30 counties on more than 11,000 people. The data, which were posted online on Thursday, have not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.

The researchers tried to treat a patient with the drug for 10 days, where each infected person received 200 milligrams dose on the first day and 100 mg dose on subsequent days.

Dr. Ilan Schwartz, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Alberta in Canada, said, “This puts the issue to rest — there is certainly no mortality benefit.”

However, Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco, was more circumspect.

A huge trial like this one, conducted in various countries with various health care systems, can lead to inconsistent treatment protocols whose effects can be difficult to analyze, he said.

Remdesivir was originally developed by Gilead Sciences to treat Ebola and hepatitis C.

The drug was granted emergency authorisation by the Food and Drug Administration on May 1 following a trial by the National Institutes of Health, who discovered that it modestly reduced the time to recovery in severely ill patients.

That study, too, did not find that remdesivir prevented deaths in patients with Covid-19.

The antiviral has become part of the standard of care for Covid-19 patients in the United States and has been administered to thousands of patients since its approval, including President Trump after his diagnosis with Covid-19 this month.

The drug costs $3,120 per treatment course for patients with private insurance in the United States.