Dan O'Day, Gilead CEO (Andrew Harnik, AP Images)

FDA anoints Gilead­'s remde­sivir as the Covid-19 treat­ment win­ner, hand­ing down full ap­proval — de­spite some deep skep­ti­cism

Sev­en months in­to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, the race to de­vel­op a treat­ment for the dis­ease that’s proved to be the biggest health cri­sis in a cen­tu­ry has an of­fi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed win­ner: Gilead. And they’re pick­ing up the prize — worth bil­lions in peak sales — de­spite a ma­jor study that con­clud­ed the drug was no help in re­duc­ing the num­ber of peo­ple who die from the virus.

The FDA hand­ed down a thumbs-up for remde­sivir, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Thurs­day af­ter­noon, as the drug be­comes the first ful­ly ap­proved treat­ment for Covid-19 in the US. Remde­sivir, to be mar­ket­ed as Vek­lury, will come with a la­bel for treat­ment in adults and chil­dren old­er than 12 in Covid-19 cas­es that re­quire hos­pi­tal­iza­tion.

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Venture & Research Associate

Alexandria Real Estate Equities

San Francisco, CA, USA