Once again, the NY Times gets the facts wrong. Remdesivir, a chemical compound patented by Gilead Sciences, is not used for any indication. It is not an FDA licensed agent, and was developed and tested against the Ebola virus, but failed to pass muster. It is a chemical with pharmaceutical pretensions.”
Remdesivir was used at an Everett, Washington hospital for patient zero here in Washington state. He was a young man who returned from Wuhan - infecting 60 people along the way - was treated with non-approved FDA drug and survived. Unfortunately he started the huge rash of deaths we have endured here in Washington state.
Remdesivir is currently being tested by Kaiser Permanente here in Seattle as well as University of Nebraska and some other hospitals.
Even if Remdesivir is proven to be effective and goes throught the FDA process, it will cost about $1,000 per dose. The malaria drug recommended by President Trump was approved by the FDA years ago to use in malaria treatment. It costs about $20 per treatment.
Maybe in the long run Remdesivir will be approved by the FDA and be more effective, but it will take a long tine to test and be expensive to administer.
The projected cost of remdesivir is not surprising. It is from Gilead. Five years ago, when there was a major market for medications to treat Hepatitis C virus (many residual cases from the Viet Nam era). At that point, Gilead marketed appropriate agents that could clear the infection; initially the cost of treatment with one of these agents was a mere $80,000 per patient.