Posted by Michael Wonder on 20 May 2020
Valuing and pricing remdesivir: should drug makers get paid for helping us get back to work?
20 May 2020 - On April 29, the National Institutes of Health announced that in a placebo-controlled trial of patients with advanced COVID-19 disease, patients receiving the experimental drug remdesivir (Gilead Sciences) recovered in a median of 11 days after beginning treatment, a 31 percent improvement over patients in the placebo arm, who recovered in 15 days (p <0.001).
The trial also “suggested” a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 8.0% for patients receiving remdesivir, and 11.6% for those receiving placebo (p = 0.059).
Importantly, these results are interim and have yet to undergo peer review. But if they withstand scrutiny, what might be a “reasonable” or “fair” price for such a therapy?
