This is the first medication authorized to combat covid-19. Washington secured supplies for its hospitals until September.
By:
EFE
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The United States Government has acquired almost 90% of the inventory of the next three months of the drug remdesivir, one of the drugs that has shown its positive effects in the treatment of covid-19, the media reported Tuesday 1-J.
The U.S. Department of Health secured the purchase of more than 500,000 remdesivir treatments from pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences for American hospitals through September.
Specifically, the volume acquired represents 100% of the production for July, and 90% for August and September.
“President Donald Trump has struck an incredible deal to ensure that Americans have access to the first licensed therapy for covid-19. As far as possible, we want to ensure that any American patient in need can get it,” he said in a statement the Secretary of Health, Alex Azar.
The purchase is known just as the United States is experiencing a spike in the number of coronavirus infections, with more than 40,000 daily, especially in southern and western states of the country such as Texas, Florida, Arizona and California.
Remdesivir, an experimental therapy that began development in 2009 and was tested with Ebola patients in the middle of the past decade, has been emergency cleared for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus because An American clinical trial showed that this drug shortens the recovery time in some patients.
Gilead announced on Monday 29-J that it will sell its drug for $ 390 a vial for the governments of developed countries, which would raise the price of the most common treatment to $ 2,340 per patient and the longest therapies at $ 4,290.
In the United States, since the use of Remdesivir for coronavirus sufferers was approved in May, hospitals have been using doses donated by Gilead, which will start charging for the drug starting in July.
It is an antiviral, administered intravenously, which slows down the production of new virus particles and, as a result, a viral infection develops less rapidly, and critically ill patients recover an average of four days earlier than usual.
On Tuesday, June 30, the United States recorded 2,636,538 confirmed cases of covid-19 and 127,425 deaths, according to an independent count by Johns Hopkins University.
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