Gilead CEO Dan O'­Day of­fers a de­tailed ex­pla­na­tion on remde­sivir ac­cess — re­as­sur­ing an­a­lysts that Covid-19 da­ta are com­ing fast

Af­ter com­ing un­der heavy fire from con­sumer groups ready to pum­mel them for grab­bing the FDA’s or­phan sta­tus for remde­sivir — re­served to en­cour­age the de­vel­op­ment of rare dis­ease ther­a­pies — Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day had some ex­plain­ing to do about the com­pa­ny’s ap­proach to pro­vid­ing ac­cess to this drug to pa­tients suf­fer­ing from Covid-19. And he set aside time over the week­end to pa­tient­ly ex­plain how they are mak­ing their po­ten­tial pan­dem­ic drug avail­able in a new pro­gram — one he feels can bet­ter be used to ad­dress a grow­ing pack of in­fect­ed pa­tients des­per­ate­ly seek­ing remde­sivir un­der com­pas­sion­ate use pro­vi­sions.

In ad­di­tion to try­ing to re­as­sure pa­tients that they will once again have an av­enue to pur­sue ac­cess, O’Day al­so re­as­sured some an­a­lysts who had been fret­ting that Chi­na’s quick come­back from the coro­n­avirus out­break could de­rail its ul­tra-fast sched­ule for test­ing the drug in pa­tients. The da­ta are still ex­pect­ed in a few weeks, he says in the let­ter, putting the read­out in April.

O’Day em­pha­sizes that Gilead in­tends to pur­sue a pric­ing ap­proach that will make this drug wide­ly avail­able — if it proves ef­fec­tive and safe. But no one is quite sure just what the longterm val­ue would be, giv­en the work be­ing done on a va­ri­ety of vac­cines that may be rolled out as ear­ly as this fall — at least to the most heav­i­ly threat­ened groups.

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