A new drug, A new hope
Recent experimental drug is said to heal the infected.
Newest findings from a federal trial of an experimental
drug helped send the stock market soaring on Wednesday, another sign of the
desperation for viable treatment against the virus.
Just before the opening of markets, Gilead,
maker of the antiviral drug remdesivir, announced that it was aware of positive
data about the drug’s performance in a federal trial, sending future upward Trading
in the company’s shares was briefly halted.
In a briefing at the white house Dr. Anthony
S. Fauci, Director of the national institution of allergy and infectious
diseases, said the trial had shown that the drug could modestly speed recovery in
patients infected with the coronavirus.
The improvement in recovery times doesn’t seem
to be 100 percent but it is a very important proof of concept, because what it
has proven is that a drug can block this virus Dr. Fauci continued
While business leaders, scientists and
politicians are doing their best to find ways to fight an insidious pandemic
and to recover an economy which is already deplorable. The virus so far has
claimed at least 60.000 lives in the United States, and more than 200.000
worldwide. There have been precious few reasons for optimism, and the markets
seized on the news.
The trail which was sponsored by the
national institute of allergy and infectious diseases enrolled 1.063 patients
who were given remdesivir or placebo. The time to recovery averaged 11 days
among those who got the drug, compared with 15 days for those who got placebo.
There were few deaths in the remdesivir
group but the result did not reach statistical significance, Dr. Fauci
said. Deaths were not a primary measure
in the trial.
Dr. Fauci has also cautioned that the
results of the study still needed properly peer-reviewed, but he was optimistic
that remdesivir would become the standard of care for patients with covid19.
Source: NYT
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