The United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) has finally approved a potential Coronavirus drug that may cure the disease in a faster possible way. The experimental antiviral drug produced by biotech firm Gilead Sciences called Remdesivir is one of the most talked-about COVID-19 cures in the U.S. Will it be the official Coronavirus cure we've all been waiting for?
US FDA finally says YES to Remdesivir drug to cure COVID-19 patients!
On Friday, May 1, the Federal agency announced that the drug remdesivir can now be used to all the positive Coronavirus patients.
The FDA issues an official call of 'emergency authorization' with the said drug after the medicine passes all the initial tests needed for it to certify as a cure for the pandemic disease.
Unexplained by the agency, only patients that are "hospitalized with severe diseases" are the priority patients that will be given with remdesivir.
Interestingly, the FDA admits that the agency only has limited information about the drug's safety or effectiveness. However, the clinical trials that it went through showed a massive and faster recovery time with all the positive patients--concluding that patients can use the drug to cure the virus somehow.
What is 'remdesivir' drug?
If you've been checking all the articles pointing to coronavirus cure, you might have bumped in with the medical cure called 'remdesivir.'
Remdesivir was a drug originally used to treat the Ebola disease. Sadly, the Gilead product does not show any progress with curing this disease. When scientists found out that this medicine can be a potential human coronaviruses cure, Gilead Sciences immediately submitted it to the FDA to be clinically tested by the government.
The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases had done clinical trials with its effectivity and found out that out of the 1,000 patients that undergo testing, most of them showed a 31 percent faster recovery time when the drug was injected inside their bodies.
Former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson clarified that this medicine could not be purchased over the counter in any pharmacy. Remdesivir can only be authorized to be given to patients with severe diseases, and hospital staffs are the only authorized people to inject the cure to the infected patients.
"There'll be selected patients that will be eligible for it [remdesivir]. I think its great news though, I think it is going to be a huge difference," said him.
Patients that only have low blood oxygen levels, need oxygen therapy, or need breathing support like a ventilator is said to be the priority patients to be given with the drug.
When will the drug be distributed in hospitals?
For now, Gilead Sciences stated that they are doing the best they can to distribute the drug to all hospitals that needed it quickly.
"We will continue to work with partners across the globe to increase our supply of remdesivir while advancing our ongoing clinical trials to supplement our understanding of the drug's profile," Daniel O'Day, CEO of Gilead Sciences, said in an emailed statement. "We are working to meet the needs of patients, their families, and healthcare workers around the world with the greatest sense of urgency and responsibility."
