FRAGILE HOPE

Remdesivir Trial News Leaks, Pushing Gilead, Stocks Higher on Hopes for a Coronavirus Cure

Some 125 people, of whom 113 were seriously ill, were treated with the Gilead drug, with reportedly remarkable effects.

A Chicago hospital treating severe COVID-19 patients with the antiviral medicine remdesivir in a clinical trial reported it’s seeing rapid recoveries from fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week, STAT News reports. Remdesivir, manufactured by Gilead Sciences, was tested on 125 people with COVID-19, of whom 113 had severe cases of the disease. The patients were given daily infusions of remdesivir. In a leaked video discussion about the trial results with University of Chicago faculty members, Kathleen Mullane, the university’s infectious disease specialist overseeing the remdesivir studies for the hospital, said: “The best news is that most of our patients have already been discharged, which is great. We’ve only had two patients perish.” The same trials are being run concurrently at other institutions, and no official clinical data has been published. The remdesivir news helped push financial markets higher, with the Dow Industrials expected to open around 3 percent higher. Boeing stock was also surging, rising 9 percent on plans to restart commercial aircraft production at its Seattle area facilities.