The preliminary result suggests that there is an antiviral drug that can speed the recovery from COVID-19. This antiviral drug called Remdesivir. Hopefully, Remdesivir drug for COVID-19 can show efficacy against this pandemic. It is supposed to be the first coronavirus treatment.
A comparison of the drug with the placebo suggests that it can recover the infected patients 31% faster. Said the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in a news release on April 29.
What is Remdesivir?
Remdesivir is an antiviral medication created and developed by a U.S. pharmaceutical company, “Gilead Sciences.” They created this drug for the treatment of the Ebola Virus disease. The initial results of a trial showed that remdesivir could reduce the recovery time of patients with COVID-19.
In 2020, it seems to be the revival of Remdesivir drug for COVID-19 treatment. On Wednesday, the head of National Institution of Allergy and infectious diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci said at the White House:
“The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery,”
But soon after Dr. Fauci’s announcement, another result based on a study in China was published by The Lancet. This study concludes that remdesivir did nothing to speed the recovery from COVID-19. Nor did it reduce deaths compared with placebo in patients.
So what should the public assume of such contradictive results?
Effects of Remdesivir
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s study of Coronavirus treatment with remdesivir drug relates to a clinical trial By Gilead Sciences. The international trial assigned 1063 hospitalized people for Coronavirus cure with intravenous infusions of remdesivir or placebo.
It showed the remdesivir group’s average recovery time was 11 days. While the average improvement time of the placebo group was 15 days.
This recovery defines the recovered people as being well enough to back to normal activities or being discharged from the hospital. Meanwhile, the 8 percent death rate of the remdesivir group was also less than 11 percent of the placebo group.
“Although a 31 percent improvement doesn’t seem like a knockout 100 percent, it is a very important proof of concept,” Anthony Fauci said at the White House “It has proven that a drug can block this virus.”
Therefore, scientists and the World Health Organization consider remdesivir drug most promising. But, reports are still conflicting and under the research process.
According to a previous animal study of Mers-CoV and Sars, remdesivir prevents a particular enzyme that encourages viral replication. Though this study has experimented on animals, scientists believe it’ll have similar effects on Covid-19 patients.
Conclusion
The Lancet China study found remdesivir had no effects on the improvement of patient’s health. However, it also had flaws as this study was stopped early by the data monitoring board. Because of the Covid-19 situation was under control in Wuhan.
Remdesiver drug to treat coronavirus is yet to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It is also not proven as an effective coronavirus cure for patients. So, we have to wait for results from other trials expected to take place in the coming days.
