In United States, the phase three clinical trial of the antiviral drug Remdesivir, led by a team of investigators, including an Indian-American physician, for the treatment of the Corona virus patients has shown positive results.

The California-based pharma company Gilead Sciences on Wednesday said that the preliminary results showed that 50 per cent of the COVID-19 patients treated with a five-day dosage of Remdesivir improved and more than half were discharged from the hospital within two weeks.

A phase three clinical trial is said to be the final step in the process of the drug approval.

These data are encouraging as they indicate that patients who received a shorter, five-day course of Remdesivir experienced similar clinical improvement as patients who received a 10-day treatment course, said Aruna Subramanian, Clinical Professor of Medicine and Chief of Immuno-compromised Host Infectious Diseases, Stanford University School of Medicine and one of the lead investigators of the study.

Ms. Subramanian said while additional data are still needed, these results help to bring a clearer understanding of how treatment with Remdesivir may be optimised, if proven safe and effective. Remdesivir is not yet licensed or approved anywhere globally and has not been demonstrated to be safe or effective for the treatment of the COVID-19.

Dr Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House Corona virus Task Force, told reporters at a media briefing with Trump that Gilead results from the Remdesivir clinical trial for treating the disease showed quite good news.

President Trump called it a very positive event, in response to a question on the latest result of the clinical trial of Remdesivir. The White House described the development as quite good news.

In an earlier interview to Stanford Medicine, Ms. Subramanian said that during normal times, a phase three clinical trial typically takes months of planning, after years of research before it is underway. With a fast-moving pandemic bearing down and no approved treatments available, researchers are, like everyone else, desperate for answers and they have ramped up their efforts to find solutions Ms. Subramanian said.

Remdesivir, like other anti-virals, is designed to target the system the virus uses to replicate, acting as a cap that prevents the virus from making new copies of itself or infecting other cells, she said.