April 29, 2020 / Lisette Voytko, Forbes Staff
TOPLINE
Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases expert, said Wednesday in a press conference that a federal trial of the antiviral remdesivir showed the drug blocked an enzyme the virus uses, resulting in a “better” mortality rate and shorter recoveries in coronavirus patients, and that it will be the “standard of care.”
KEY FACTS
- “The data shows that remdesivir has a clear cut significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said from the Oval Office.
- The trial showed that patients taking remdesivir had a shorter time to recovery at 11 days, while patients taking a placebo recovered in 15 days, according to Fauci.
- It’s a 31% improvement in time to recovery, which Fauci said is “very important, because it has proven that a drug can block this virus.”
- “Whenever you have clear cut evidence that a drug works, you have an ethical obligation to let the people in the placebo group know,” Fauci said, adding that’s why the announcement was being made.
- Fauci’s announcement followed earlier news from Gilead Sciences, Inc., which makes remdesivir, and said in a press release that the federal trial showed “positive data.”
- In this study published Wednesday in The Lancet of adult patients admitted to the hospital for severe COVID-19, remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits.
