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Egypt Today
“Gilead’s Remdesivir should not be used for treating hospitalised COVID-19 patients, regardless of how ill they are. As there is no evidence the drug improves survival or reduces the need for ventilation”, a World Health Organization panel said on Friday.
“Given the costs and resources, implications associated with Remdesivir … the panel felt the responsibility should be on demonstrating evidence of efficacy, which is not established by the currently available data”, it added.
The advice is another setback for the drug, which grabbed worldwide attention as a potentially effective treatment for COVID-19. It showed promising results during the early trial stages.
The antiviral, known by the brand name Veklury, is one of only two medicines currently authorised to treat COVID-19 patients across the world. But a large WHO-led trial known as ‘the Solidarity Trial’ showed, last month, that it had little or no effect on 28-day mortality or length of hospital stays for COVID-19 patients.
The medication was one of the drugs used to treat US President Donald Trump’s coronavirus infection. It had been shown in previous studies to have cut time to recovery. It is authorised or approved for use as a COVID-19 treatment in more than 50 countries.
Gilead GILD.O, the pharmaceutical company of the Remdesivir medication, questioned the Solidarity Trial’s results and said, in a statement on Friday, it was “disappointed” at the new WHO guideline.
“Veklury (the commercial brand name of the Remdesivir) is recognised as a standard of care for the treatment of hospitalised patients with COVID-19 in guidelines from numerous credible national organisations”, the Gilead GILD.O statement added.
The WHO advice raises questions about whether the European Union will pursue its order for the 500,000 courses of the antiviral, worth €1 Billion ($1.2 billion), which it placed last month.
The European Commission said its drugs regulator, the European Medicines Agency, had requested the full data from the Solidarity Trial and “will assess the evidence … together with other available data, to see if any changes are needed”.
Italy’s drugs regulator, AIFA, said it had been “stressing for weeks the modest effectiveness of Remdesivir”.
The WHO’s Guideline Development Group (GDG) panel said its recommendation was based on evidence review which included data from four international randomised trials involving more than 7,000 patients hospitalised with COVID-19.
