Gilead Sciences says remdesivir reduces risk of death in COVID-19 patients

Researchers from biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences said that COVID-19 patients administered with the antiviral drug remdesivir had better recovery and their conditions improved, thus reducing the mortality rates. In a study published on July 10, Gilead conducted Comparative Analysis of Clinical Recovery and Mortality Outcomes from the Phase 3 SIMPLE Trial. The researchers compared 312 people hospitalized from COVID-19 disease. 

As per the study, remdesivir was associated with an improvement in clinical recovery and a 62 percent reduction in the risk of mortality compared with standard of care. Further, an evaluation of the safety and efficacy of remdesivir across different racial and ethnic patient subgroups was conducted in the US which found similar clinical outcomes as the overall patient population in the study. Remdesivir medicine shortened hospital recovery times for extremely critical patients, according to data in April from a separate US government trial, published in Gilead's late-stage study.  

Doctor at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Susan Olender said, the study served as an important adjunct to clinical trial data even as it is not as vigorous as a randomized controlled trial. Merdad Parsey, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, Gilead Sciences said that to address the urgency of the continuing pandemic, “We are working to broaden our understanding of the full utility of remdesivir.” He added, “we are sharing data with the research community as quickly as possible with the goal of providing transparent and timely updates on new developments with remdesivir.” 

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74.4 per cent recovered

As per the statement published by Gilead, at least 74.4 percent of remdesivir-treated COVID-19 severe patients had recovered by Day 14 versus 59.0 patients receiving standard of care. Additionally, the mortality rate for these patients was 7.6 percent on Day 14, while patients on standard care had mortality rate of 12.5 percent. However, a professor at University of Pittsburgh’s medical school, Walid Gellad said it might not be necessary, the relation of clinical trial data and observational data with mortality. He said, “The mortality in the remdesivir trials has generally been lower for both control and intervention groups than other trials and other real-world cohorts I've seen.”  

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