UPDATE: The federal Food and Drug Administration has issued emergency use authorization for remdesivir.

President Donald Trump shared the announcement on Friday. The FDA’s decision means patients with critical cases of COVID-19 can be administered the drug.

A new drug developed at UNC is proving effective in reducing the recovery time of coronavirus patients, the university announced on Wednesday.

The medication, called remdesivir, helped patients in a clinical trial usually recover in 11 days, compared to 15 days in the group taking a placebo.

“This is a game-changer for the treatment of patients with COVID-19,” UNC epidemiologist Dr. Ralph Baric said in a statement. “Remdesivir provides an effective treatment strategy for the many infected individuals around the globe.”

The study — which was conducted in partnership with Gilead Sciences — involved 1,063 patients around the world, including several patients at Duke University Hospital.

“We know we can develop drugs against the virus,” Baric said on CNN Wednesday evening. “That will galvanize the scientific community to identify better drugs, combinations of drugs with remdisivir that continue to improve outcomes in patients. I think it’s an exciting development and it offers hope to humans infected with this terrible virus.”

The Associated Press reported while the drug also might reduce deaths, it is not certain from the partial results revealed so far. The group receiving remdesivir had a death rate of eight percent versus 11.6 percent for the placebo group

“What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force.

United States health officials are expected to release the full results of the trial in a forthcoming report.

“By shortening recovery times, remdesivir could potentially shorten hospital stays and help prevent the overloading of our health care system,” said Timothy Sheahan, assistant professor of epidemiology at UNC.

Gilead Sciences will soon begin a Phase 3 Simple Trial to confirm whether the shorter, five-day course of remdesivir that its researchers studied is as effective as the 10-day treatment tested in the previous trial.

UNC-Chapel Hill is the highest-rated university in the United States for coronavirus research, according to a recent ranking by Microsoft Academic.

Featured photo via AP Photo/Brian Inganga.

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