By Otto Rodriguez
Miami-Dade Health
Discarded recently in small scale trials, a drug called remdesivir has made a dramatic comeback as a promising treatment against the novel coronavirus COVID-19, after it was approved today by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
At a press conference in the White House on Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said the “data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.”
Fauci added the study group was able to be discharged from the hospital within 11 days, on average, compared to 15 days in the placebo group. The trials were done this time around among over 1,000 individuals, he said.
Gilead Sciences, the maker of remdesivir, said in a press release that patients who received a 10-day treatment achieved similar improvement compared with other people who underwent a 5-day treatment.
This positive outlook comes after a recent study published in the renowned scientific magazine The Lancet, found that the medication was not effective at reducing the incidence of deaths due to COVID-19, or even making patients feel better.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he wanted the FDA to move “as quickly as they can” with the approval process to use remdesivir against the coronavirus.
Remdesivir is not a new drug, as it has been used in the past to treat SARS and MERS, diseases caused also by coronaviruses. The drug has also been tested as a possible treatment for Ebola.
Other possible treatments against COVID-19 are in progress as well. An Australian biotech company announced recently the use of a stem cell therapy called remestemcel-L (Ryoncil) to treat the disease.
A recent study done by the company Mesoblast, based in Melbourne, showed that 83 percent of patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by COVID-19 responded favorably to the treatment.
