Repost: Gilead, flooded with requests, suspends access to experimental coronavirus drug

Gilead will stop granting individual access to its experimental treatment for COVID-19, citing an “exponential increase” in compassionate use requests for the antiviral drug, called remdesivir.
Instead, the biotech plans to transition to an expanded access program that it says will speed the process for severely ill patients while allowing for better data collection.
Five clinical studies testing remdesivir in patients infected by the new coronavirus are currently ongoing, and could begin to yield results by next month. The drug’s quickly become a top treatment hope, boosted most recently by bullish comments from President Donald Trump in a press conference last week. […]