In this report, the authors describe outcomes in a cohort of patients hospitalized for severe Covid-19 who were treated with remdesivir on a compassionate-use basis. Remdesivir is a prodrug of a nucleotide analogue that is intracellularly metabolized to an analogue of adenosine triphosphate that inhibits viral RNA polymerases. Remdesivir has broad spectrum activity against members of several virus families, including filoviruses and coronaviruses and has shown prophylactic and therapeutic efficacy in nonclinical models of SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. In the cohort of 53 patients hospitalized for severe Covid-19 who were treated with compassionate-use remdesivir, clinical improvement was observed in 36 of 53 patients (68%) during a median follow-up of 18 days. However measurement of efficacy will require ongoing randomized, placebo-controlled trials of remdesivir therapy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32275812
by Marialuisa Zedde and Francesco Cavallieri