Drug being studied in Singapore gets US nod for emergency use

A lab technician inspecting a vial of remdesivir at a Gilead Sciences facility in California last month. The drug, which blocks the coronavirus from replicating, was originally developed to treat Ebola, but is being repurposed for Covid-19. A drug which is under in Singapore is given the greenlight to be used in the United States. - Reuters

SINGAPORE: A drug for Covid-19 that is being studied in Singapore was approved for emergency use in severely ill patients in the United States on Friday. It is remdesivir, an experimental anti-viral drug that blocks the Covid-19 (coronavirus) from replicating.

The approval had come just two days ago after early data released from a US National Institutes of Health (NIH) study of 1,063 hospitalised patients with advanced Covid-19 showed that those who took the drug recovered in an average of 11 days, compared with patients who got a placebo and recovered in 15 days.