The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on October 22, 2020 approved Veklury (remdesivir), the first drug approved to treat COVID-19.
- Veklury is approved for people at least 12 years old and weighing at least 40 kilograms who need hospitalization for their coronavirus infection.
- For patients younger than 12, the FDA will still allow the drug’s use in certain cases under its previous emergency authorization.
- Veklury, cut the time to recovery by five days — from 15 days to 10 on average — in a large study led by the US National Institutes of Health.
- The USFDA said that this approval does not include the entire population that had been authorized to use Veklury under a mechanism called emergency use authorization (EUA), which is not the same as approval.
