TUESDAY, Aug. 11, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Gilead Sciences has applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval for its COVID-19<\/a> treatment, remdesivir, CBS News<\/i> reported Monday.<\/p>\n The antiviral drug will take the brand name Veklury, the company said.<\/p>\n “Today’s filing is an important milestone as we continue to partner with the U.S. government and health care authorities around the globe to address the treatment needs of patients with COVID-19<\/a>,” Merdad Parsey, Gilead’s chief medical officer, said in a statement.<\/p>\n At the moment, remdesivir is available on an emergency basis for hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19<\/a>. If the FDA approves it, however, the drug will gain wider use. Remdesivir is already approved in Europe and Japan, CNN<\/i> reported.<\/p>\n The request for approval comes after the results of a phase 3 trial. The drug works by blocking the virus from copying itself.<\/p>\n Trials of the drug showed that it can cut recovery time from COVID-19<\/a> by nearly a third.<\/p>\n “Since the beginning of the pandemic, Gilead has worked with urgency to establish the efficacy and safety profile of Veklury, and we now have a robust data set supporting the evaluation of use of the drug across a range of hospitalized COVID-19 patient populations,” Parsey said.<\/p>\n “Remdesivir isn’t a game changer, but it is a positive,” Peter Pitts, president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former associate commissioner with the FDA, told CBS MoneyWatch<\/i> in April.<\/p>\n ![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
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