Vice President Mike Pence announced that a million vials of the potential coronavirus treatment drug remdesivir will begin appearing in hospitals across the country by Monday.
The announcement comes days after White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was “optimistic” about the drug’s potential use as a treatment for COVID-19. The drug, developed by pharmaceutical company Gilead, has been shown to improve recovery speed by almost 30 percent according to a recent study. (RELATED: Ex-FDA Head Scott Gottlieb Releases New Plan For Reopening Economy)
Gilead CEO says the 1.5-million doses of Remdesivir enough to provice courses of treatment for more than 100,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, going first to the most seriously ill.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) May 1, 2020
Fauci said Thursday that the drug had been tested on 1,000 hospitalized patients in the U.S., Germany, Spain, Denmark and Greece, among other countries. It reportedly reduced recovery time from 15 days to 11 days, according to CBS.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an Emergency Use Authorization for the drug Friday to speed up the process of making it available to Americans. (RELATED: REPORT: Trump’s Push To Hurry Coronavirus Vaccine Is Called ‘Operation Warp Speed’)
FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to Gilead Sciences, Inc. for the investigational antiviral drug remdesivir – which has been shown to shorten recovery time in some #COVID19 clinical trial patients – to treat suspected or confirmed #COVID19. https://t.co/indPpdMi7d pic.twitter.com/4RsJ5YyK07
— Dr. Stephen M. Hahn (@SteveFDA) May 1, 2020
“FDA’s emergency authorization of remdesivir, two days after the National Institutes of Health’s clinical trial showed promising results, is a significant step forward in battling COVID-19 and another example of the Trump Administration moving as quickly as possible to use science to save lives,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement.