Coronavirus Latest: Friday, October 9
On Friday, data on Gilead Sciences’ Remdesivir showed that that it cut recovery time in patients by five days. This comes as Johnson & Johnson have signed a deal with the European Union to supply the countries with 400 million doses of its vaccine. Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani joins The Final Round to discuss the latest on the coronavirus.
Video Transcript
JEN ROGERS: So global cases for the coronavirus crossed over 36.6 million. But we are seeing advances in treatments and of course, how is the move towards the vaccine going. Let's bring in Anjalee Khemlani right now for the latest on what the data is showing on one of the antiviral drugs that we have all been tracking. Anjalee.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Thanks, Jen. Yep, so Remdesivir, which is Gilead Science's antiviral that received emergency use authorization. To date, the only branded drug to be given emergency use authorization for use in coronavirus, COVID-19 patients. We saw some data today that actually, we've heard that is the final data, if you will, the peer-reviewed, gold standard data, that says that it is, in fact, an effective drug against those patients who receive oxygen. And that we saw in the highest profile case with President Trump over last weekend, when he was, in fact, on oxygen, and got the five-day dose of Remdesivir.
And we, of course, can see what that has done. There were concerns earlier on when we saw interim data on exactly which population, which target population Remdesivir. would be most effective in, whether or not it was mild to moderate, if it had any effect there or more severe patients. But it seems like specifically those individuals that receive oxygen are the ones that it's best suited for, and reduces the mortality risk of those patients.
Meanwhile, we know that for the vaccine front, Johnson and Johnson is now announcing on a 400 million dose deal with the European Union. That is just another one of those deals that we're seeing coming out with Europe, really escalating its agreements with some of these vaccine makers in the US. J&J is going to be providing 100 million doses to the US government. So a little bit more there for the European Union. And so those are sort of the areas that we are focused on right now.
