--- title: Remdesivir Drug Reduces Death from COVID-19, Gilead Reports description: Gilead reported data showing that its coronavirus drug remdesivir considerably reduced deaths from COVID-19. canonical: https://time.com/5865491/remdesivir-covid-study/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-07-10T14:47:26.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T08:59:25.508Z article:section: Health og:title: The Company That Makes Remdesivir Says it Considerably Reduces COVID-19 Deaths og:description: In a study, those getting remdesivir showed a 62% lower risk of mortality og:url: https://time.com/5865491/remdesivir-covid-study/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt686641186d7956fc/698a103cdb298740cc265982/remdesivir-covid-19-study.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: remdesivir covid 19 study og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Company That Makes Remdesivir Says it Considerably Reduces COVID-19 Deaths twitter:description: In a study, those getting remdesivir showed a 62% lower risk of mortality twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt686641186d7956fc/698a103cdb298740cc265982/remdesivir-covid-19-study.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Company That Makes Remdesivir Says It Considerably Reduces COVID-19 Deaths > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jul 10, 2020 2:47 PM UTC  One vial of the drug Remdesivir lies during a press conference about the start of a study with the Ebola drug Remdesivir in particularly severely ill patients at the University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE) in Hamburg, northern Germany on April 8, 2020. One vial of the drug Remdesivir lies during a press conference about the start of a study with the Ebola drug Remdesivir in particularly severely ill patients at the University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE) in Hamburg, northern Germany on April 8, 2020. Ulrich Perrey—AFP/ Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jul 10, 2020 2:47 PM UTC In a [report](https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press-releases/2020/7/gilead-presents-additional-data-on-investigational-antiviral-remdesivir-for-the-treatment-of-covid-19) published Friday, researchers from biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences said that COVID-19 patients receiving its antiviral drug [remdesivir](https://time.com/5840207/coronavirus-treatment-remdesivir/) experienced lower mortality rates and better recovery times compared to those not getting the treatment. The researchers compared 312 people hospitalized for COVID-19 and who received remdesivir to 818 people with similarly severe cases who were treated with standard of care, but did not need mechanical ventilation to breathe. Compared to the people in the latter group, those getting remdesivir showed a 62% lower risk of mortality during the study period. Furthermore, about 75% of patients receiving remdesivir recovered by day 14 after hospitalization, compared to 59% of those not getting the drug. The findings were presented at the [International AIDS Conference’s virtual COVID-19 conference](https://covid19.aids2020.org/), which Gilead is co-sponsoring. The analysis did not follow the rigorous gold standard of comparing an experimental treatment group to a control group within the same study, a method that ensures the two groups are similar as possible and better accounts for potentially confounding factors. A previous remdesivir study that met such criteria, conducted by the National institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and reported in late April, [showed](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-trial-shows-remdesivir-accelerates-recovery-advanced-covid-19) that people taking remdesivir had a shorter recovery time. Given the urgency of finding a treatment during a quickly-worsening pandemic, the results prompted the NIH to decide that future studies of the drug (like those testing it in combination with other drugs, including anti-inflammatories) would not need a placebo group. Gilead’s analysis is the next-best thing to a randomized placebo-controlled trial, and the company’s scientists acknowledge that more studies are needed to confirm the reduction in mortality. “To address the urgency of the continuing pandemic, we are sharing data with the research community as quickly as possible with the goal of providing transparent and timely updates on new developments with remdesivir,” Gilead Sciences Chief Medical Officer Merdad Parsey said in a statement. Gilead also reported additional data showing that remdesivir provided similar benefit to people of racial and ethnic groups that seem to be [more vulnerable to COVID-19](https://time.com/5847050/coronavirus-protests/) and its consequences. In another analysis of people who received the drug early in the pandemic (under the company’s [compassionate use program](https://time.com/5823384/remdesivier-coronavirus-study-results/)), the scientists found that children and pregnant women taking the drug had similar benefits in improved oxygen measures. Remdesivir is not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but the agency [issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA)](https://www.fda.gov/media/137564/download) for it on May 1, which allows doctors to request the drug for severely ill patients. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5865491/remdesivir-covid-study/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5865491/remdesivir-covid-study/"},"headline":"The Company That Makes Remdesivir Says It Considerably Reduces COVID-19 Deaths","datePublished":"2020-07-10T14:47:26.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T08:59:25.508Z","description":"In a study, those getting remdesivir showed a 62% lower risk of mortality","url":"https://time.com/5865491/remdesivir-covid-study/","keywords":["COVID-19","UnitedWeRise20Disaster"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt686641186d7956fc/698a103cdb298740cc265982/remdesivir-covid-19-study.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt686641186d7956fc/698a103cdb298740cc265982/remdesivir-covid-19-study.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"remdesivir covid 19 study","caption":"remdesivir covid 19 study","creditText":"Ulrich Perrey—AFP/ Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/covid-19/","name":"COVID-19"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5865491/remdesivir-covid-study/","name":"The Company That Makes Remdesivir Says It Considerably Reduces COVID-19 Deaths"}}]}] ```