Remdesiver: The drug that could help fight Covid-19

Team Udayavani, May 1, 2020, 3:23 PM IST

Remdesivir has become the first drug with proven benefits against Covid-19. Preliminary results from a clinical trial comparing the drug with a placebo suggest that remdesivir speeds recovery from Covid-19 by 31 percent.

Remdesivir is an experimental antiviral produced by the US pharmaceutical company Gilead, initially as a potential treatment for the Ebola virus. It was rapidly pushed through clinical trials after showing promising results in the lab.

The international trial randomly assigned 1,063 people hospitalized with Covid-19 to get intravenous infusions of either remdesiver or placebo. In the remdesivir group, the median time to recovery was 11 days.

According to a statement by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) that oversaw the trial, patients on the drug, made by Gilead Sciences, had a 31 percent faster time to recovery than those on a placebo.