Experts: Remdesivir isn’t the badly needed ‘silver bullet’ for coronavirus

Dr. Anthony Fauci touted an experimental drug from Gilead Sciences that shows great promise for treating coronavirus, but it does not appear to be a desperately needed cure.

Remdesivir helped coronavirus patients leave the hospital sooner in an as-yet unpublished but rigorously designed trial by the National Institutes of Health, but experts cautioned against getting too hopeful, reported Axios.

"Remdesivir is a real drug for COVID," Umer Raffat, a pharmaceutical analyst at Evercore ISI, told investors, "but again, not a silver bullet."

Experts say the primary outcome was changed during the trial, and a separate randomized trial did not produce the same promising results.

The drug also produces the best results before infections get too serious, so its efficacy is limited.

"Its availability is not going to move the needle on social distancing relaxation," tweeted physician and drug researcher Peter Bach.