There is a silver lining in the midst of all the fatalities and economic lock-down all over the world from the dreaded coronavirus outbreak in the form of many new drugs coming onboard for treatment. In Australia, scientists are working on testing an existing head lice anti-parasitic drug known as Ivermectin against the coronavirus which has been yielding great results in medical trials. In USA, a couple of anti-viral drugs are also being evaluated.
The most promising candidate that emerges recently from USA is Remdesivir developed by Gilead Sciences, Remdesivir was an Ebola drug that is being put on clinical trial. According to a report by The New England Journal of Medicine, Remdesivir, when administered to a coronavirus patient in the US, it appeared to have improved the clinical condition. Remdesivir is a nucleoside analogue that works by inhibiting viral reproduction. Dow Jones and S&P 500 stock indexes rallied 2% with the news last week along with Gilead Sciences stock price jumping 10%. The bad news is that this appears only for a small sample of 113 intensive care patients under a "compassionate" trial and most medical experts find the results inconclusive. Results from bigger trials are expected to be available in May 2020.
While more effective treatments and vaccines are being developed to overcome the current coronavirus pandemic, widespread economic damages have already been inflicted among the major economies around the world due to the lock-down. It is interesting to see the stock markets rallying non-stop in the face of an increasing unemployment (last count was 22 Milllion people filing for unemployment benefits) as well as more and more businesses facing prospect of bankruptcy in the leading economy of USA.
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