Hospitalized patients with advanced COVID-19 and lung involvement who received remdesivir recovered faster than similar patients who received placebo, according to preliminary analysis from a randomized, controlled trial of 1,063 patients that began in February. The Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT), sponsored by the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), is the first clinical trial launched in the United States to evaluate an experimental treatment for COVID-19.
On April 27, an independent data and safety monitoring board overseeing the trial shared interim analysis with the study team, noting that remdesivir was better than placebo for time to recovery, a metric often used in influenza trials. Recovery in this study was defined as being well enough for hospital discharge or returning to normal activity level.
Specifically, preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received...
