"A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week, STAT has learned.
Remdesivir was one of the first medicines identified as having the potential to impact SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, in lab tests. The entire world has been waiting for results from Gilead’s clinical trials, and positive results would likely lead to fast approvals by the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies. If safe and effective, it could become the first approved treatment against the disease.
The University of Chicago Medicine recruited 125 people with Covid-19 into Gilead’s two Phase 3 clinical trials. Of those people, 113 had severe disease. All the patients have been treated with daily infusions of remdesivir. STATnews
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Very favorable results. IMO there will be several therapies that prove effective against COVID-19. An effective therapy, as opposed to a vaccine, may save the US economy and the national polity. Without such a therapy the prospects are bleak in spite of all the "whistling in the dark." If we have to wait for a vaccine the wreckage will be so bad by then that the country will be hard to remember as it was. pl
I wonder which country manufactures Remdesivir for Gilead & if
Gilead is contractually obligated to continue to manufacture in
that country.
Novartis is a Swiss company but wouldn't tell me which country they
used for manufacture. Seems all the pharma companies have circled
the wagons.
Posted by: elaine | 18 April 2020 at 12:18 AM
Interferon, used primarily to treat hep-C was costing about $1,600
a week I think it's now been replaced by another drug.
Tsigma, used to treat CML leukemia costs about $13,000 a month.
If the patient utilizes Good RX the insurance company won't help pay
& ditto if the patient buys the drug from Canada where the cost is
only $3,000 per month. Appears to me the insurance companies don't
mind spending lots more however I don't grasp why. However if the patient is basically indigent help may be on the way. Something
very squirrely happening between insurance companies & pharma.
Posted by: elaine | 18 April 2020 at 12:55 AM
“It was like a double knockout punch. The number of positives was shocking, but the fact that 100 percent of the positives had no symptoms was equally shocking,” said Dr. Jim O’Connell, president of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, which provides medical care at the city’s shelters."
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/trending/coronavirus-cdc-reviewing-stunning-universal-testing-results-boston-homeless-shelter/ZADQ45HCAZEVJAZA3OTCUR7M6M/
Posted by: Terence Gore | 18 April 2020 at 11:44 AM
That is why, in modern society, we have experts in different fields: everyone has right to express their opinions but some are valid and others based on wishful thinking: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-17/malaria-drugs-fails-to-help-coronavirus-patients-in-controlled-studies
FIRST do no harm.
Posted by: Amir | 18 April 2020 at 12:03 PM
Amir,
Better is the enemy of good enough.
Posted by: Fred | 18 April 2020 at 01:30 PM