https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01295-8

Hopes rise for coronavirus drug remdesivir
Despite conflicting studies, results from largest trial yet show the antiviral speeds up recovery, putting it on track to become a standard of care in the United States.

An experimental drug — and one of the world’s best hopes for treating COVID-19 — could shorten the time to recovery from coronavirus infection, according to the largest and most rigorous clinical trial of the compound yet.

The drug, called remdesivir, interferes with the replication of some viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which is responsible for the current pandemic. On 29 April, Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), announced that a clinical trial in more than 1,000 people had showed that those taking remdesivir recovered in 11 days on average, compared with 15 days for those on a placebo.

“Although a 31% improvement doesn’t seem like a knockout 100%, it is a very important proof of concept,” Fauci said. “What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus.”

There were also fewer deaths among trial participants who received the drug, he said, but that trend was not statistically significant. The shortened recovery time, however, was significant, and was enough of a benefit that investigators decided to stop the trial early, he said, to ensure that those participants who were receiving placebo could now access the drug. Fauci added that remdesivir would become a standard treatment for COVID-19.

The news comes after weeks of data leaks and on a day of mixed results from clinical trials of the drug. The drug’s maker, Gilead Sciences of Foster City, California, announced on the same day that in its own trial, more than half of 400 participants with severe COVID-19 had recovered from their illness within two weeks of receiving treatment. But the study lacked a placebo-controlled arm, making the results difficult to interpret. Also on 29 April, a smaller trial run in China announced that it had found1 no benefits from remdesivir when compared with a placebo. But that trial was stopped early owing to difficulty in enrolling participants as the outbreak subsided in China. Nevertheless, onlookers are hopeful that the large NIAID trial provides the first glimmer of promise in a race to find a drug that works against the coronavirus, which has infected more than three million people worldwide.

“There is a lot of focus on remdesivir because it’s potentially the best shot we have,” says virologist Stephen Griffin at the University of Leeds, UK.

Hmmm

The end of Covid-19