A closely-watched Gilead Sciences Inc. experimental antiviral drug failed to help patients with severe COVID-19 in a clinical trial conducted in China, but the drugmaker said the study's results were inconclusive because it was terminated early.
Shares of Gilead (GILD) fell more than 4% after the data was inadvertently released and first reported by the Financial Times.
It comes days after another report detailed rapid recovery in fever and respiratory symptoms in some patients with COVID-19 — the sometimes deadly respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus — who were treated with remdesivir at the University of Chicago Medicine hospital.
Interest in Gilead's remdesivir has been high as there are currently no approved treatments or preventive vaccines for COVID-19, and doctors are desperate for anything that might alter the course of the disease that attacks the lungs and can shut down other organs in extremely severe cases.
In the Chinese trial remdesivir, given by intravenous infusion, failed to improve patients' condition or reduce the pathogen's presence in the bloodstream, according to draft documents published accidentally by the World Health Organization (WHO).
But details were thin and suggested limitations in interpreting the data that has not yet been fully reviewed.
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ReplyDelete"..according to draft documents published accidentally by the World Health Organization (WHO).."
I'm beginning to think that China wants this virus to circulate as long as possible, and that it is giving them what they think is cover to do their deeds.
As you watch all this it's very hard to rule out an intentional release.