The top US epidemiologist says antiviral medicine remdesivir has a "clear cut" benefit in the treatment of Covid-19, after a clinical trial showed patients given the drug recovered more than 30 per cent faster than those on a placebo.
It is the first time any medicine has been clinically shown to improve the condition of patients with Covid-19, which has led to the deaths of more than 220,000 people across the world.
The news was enough to propel a rebound on Wall Street even after data showed the pandemic had plunged the United States into its worst economic slump in a decade, and Germany predicted its biggest recession since the aftermath of the Second World War.
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A Buddhist monk scatters seeds on a rice paddy to mark the start of the cultivating season in Piliyandala a suburb of the Sri Lanka's capital Colombo. The usually grand ceremonies were scaled down as the country remained under a curfew to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus which has infected 650 people and claimed seven lives. AFP -
Homeless women wear protective face masks as they wait for free food near a market area during a lockdown in place to prevent the spread of coronavirus in Kolkata, India. According to media reports, Prime Minister Modi announced that India's initial 21-day lockdown will be extended until 03 May 2020 in an attempt to curb the spread of coronavirus. EPA -
Nurse Shirley Molloy tests a patient for COVID-19 at a drive-through Fever Clinic in Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. The Queensland Government has announced that some restrictions will be eased starting 02 May 2020 due to a very low number of new COVID-19 infections. EPA -
Buddhists wearing protective masks attend a service at Joggye Temple in central Seoul , South Korea, as they take part in a prayer service for the ongoing fight against the coronavirus and to celebrate Buddha's birthday. EPA -
A Peruvian is seen looking outside of a tent while living on the street waiting to be tested for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and allowed to return home to another part of the country, in Lima, Peru. REUTERS -
A swab chamber used by health workers to perform coronavirus disease (COVID-19) nasal swab tests is seen in Depok, during the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Jakarta, Indonesia. REUTERS -
A health worker takes a rest during a nasal swab test for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Jakarta, Indonesia. REUTERS -
A handout photo made available by the Executive Committee for Changi Exhibition Centre Facility shows COVID-19 patients alighting a van before entering a community isolation facility at the Changi Exhibition Centre in Singapore. Singapore has seen a surge in the number of cases, with a majority of patients being work pass holders staying in foreign worker dormitories. To cope with the surge, Singapore has set up community isolation facilities with a capacity of over 41,000 beds. EPA -
People ride bicycle in New York's Times Square, Wednesday night, during the coronavirus pandemic. President Donald Trump said Wednesday the federal government will not be extending its coronavirus social distancing guidelines once they expire Thursday. AP -
An employee working at a textile factory in Handan in China's northern Hebei province. Chinese factory activity continued to expand in April, data showed on April 30, but analysts warned that the outlook remained clouded by battered overseas demand as the rest of the world struggles to overcome the coronavirus pandemic. AFP -
Buddhist believers wear masks as a preventive measure against the coronavirus (COVID-19), as they gather during a birthday of Buddha and service to pray for overcoming the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic at Jogyesa Temple in Seoul, South Korea. Buddha was born approximately 2,564 years ago, and although the exact date is unknown. South Korea reported yet another single-digit increase in the number of coronavirus infections, but the country is keeping a watchful eye on this week's holidays, which could lead to more cases. According to the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 4 new cases were reported. The total number of infections in the nation tallies at 10,765. Getty -
Some of the spilled masks are visible on the shoulder of southbound Interstate 880 in Union City, Calif. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the freeway suffered a mini-traffic jam when someone tossed hundreds of face masks onto the road and some motorists stopped to grab them, the California Highway Patrol reported. At around 1:30 p.m., CHP officers received a report that a white truck had stopped on Interstate 880 in Union City and someone tossed out boxes of medical masks, the CHP reported. AP -
Nurses with goggle marks and plasters on their faces walk after their shift at the intensive care unit where patients with COVID-19 are treated at Juarez hospital, as the coronavirus disease (COVID 19) continues in Mexico City, Mexico. REUTERS -
Sandra Perez, left, purchases goods at a grocery store she intends to donate to needy families, in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. AP -
People wear face masks as a mandatory precaution for riding on public transportations amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak while walking on the platform of a metro station in Taipei, Taiwan. REUTERS -
A soldier stands at a checkpoint during a joint operation by police and army, as part of security measures to keep people out of the city downtown during a quarantine throughout the country to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in San Salvador, El Salvador. REUTERS
It came as the World Health Organisation's emergency committee was due to meet Thursday for the first time in three months to discuss the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic that has claimed more than 226,000 lives worldwide.
But there are mixed reports with a World Health Organisation study in China showing no impact of the drug. Senior WHO official Michael Ryan declined to weigh in on the latest findings, saying he had not reviewed the complete study.
"We are all hoping -- fervently hoping -- that one or more of the treatments currently under observation and under trial will result in altering clinical outcomes" and reducing deaths, he said.
The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which oversaw the trial, said that patients on the drug made by Gilead Sciences had a 31 per cent faster time to recovery than those on a placebo.
"Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo," it said.
For Dr Anthony Fauci, who leads the NIAID and has been one of the government's point man during the crisis, "the data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery."
"Although a 31 per cent improvement doesn't seem like a knockout 100 per cent, it is a very important proof of concept because what it has proven is that a drug can block this virus," he told reporters at the White House.
The results, however, didn’t give clear evidence that people who were on the drug were less likely to die, although there was a small difference it was statistically too small to claim a benefit. The mortality rate was 8.0 per cent for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6 per cent for the placebo group.
The trial began on February 21 and involved 1,063 people across 68 locations in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Neither the patients nor their physicians were aware of which group they belonged to, in order to eliminate unconscious bias.
US virus fatalities soared past 60,000 on Wednesday. The country has suffered the most deaths, with Britain's toll shooting up to the world's third worst at over 26,000.
Peter Horby, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the study, said: "We need to see the full results, but if confirmed this would be a fantastic result and great news for the fight against Covid-19."
President Donald Trump, who described the news as a "positive event," said he supported an emergency use authorization for the drug, which would allow doctors to prescribe it more widely.
The chief executive of Gilead Sciences, the US laboratory that manufactures remdesivir, Daniel O'Day, said the company plans to donate the 1.5 million doses they have in stock – enough to treat at least 140,000 patients.
The company would then sell the drug at an "affordable" price, he told the health news site Stat.
Remdesivir, which previously failed in trials against Ebola, belongs to a class of drugs that act on the virus directly – as opposed to controlling the abnormal and often lethal autoimmune response it causes.
It mimics one of the four building blocks of RNA and DNA and gets absorbed into the virus's genome, short-circuiting its replication process.
In his remarks to the press, Dr Fauci indicated that the approach could pave the way for better drugs adopting the same model.
While the findings were broadly welcomed by scientists, some cautioned that the benefits were relatively modest.
"This is the first evidence that remdesivir has genuine benefits, but they are certainly not dramatic," said Stephen Evans, a medical statistics expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
"These data are promising, and given that we have no proven treatments yet for Covid, it may well lead to fast-track approval of remdesivir," said Babak Javid, principal investigator at Tsinghua University School of Medicine in Beijing.
"However, it also shows that remdesivir is not a magic bullet."
There had been mixed news about the intravenous antiviral in recent weeks.
A summary of results posted on the website of the WHO last week showed it failed in a smaller Chinese trial. The Lancet on Wednesday published the formal paper describing that experiment.
In that study of 237 patients in Wuhan, doctors found no positive effects of administering the drug compared with a control group of adults, except for those patients who required ventilators.
But the Chinese test had to be halted early because it could not recruit enough people, and was considered by many experts to be too small to be reliable.
Dr Fauci said it was "not an adequate study."
Apart from remdesivir, the antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are also being widely used against Covid-19 on a so-called "compassionate basis" pending results from large trials.
Other therapies that are being studied include collecting antibodies from Covid-19 survivors and injecting them in patients, or harvesting antibodies from genetically engineered mice that were deliberately infected.
