On the wake of the rising COVID-19 cases in the state, the US Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it will be buying up virtually the entire stock of Gilead's remdesivir drug, which has been found to be effective against COVID-19, till September. This follows the company's announcement that it would be sending nearly all of its supply of the drug to the United States over the next three months. The HHS, in a press release, said it has secured nearly 500,000 remdesivir courses for hospitals in the United States through September, according to a report by India Today. This will leave nearly no stock for the rest of the world over the coming months even as the World Health Organisation has warned that the Covid-19 pandemic is only about to get worse.
Remdesivir has so far helped shorten hospital recovery times in a clinical trial, it won emergency use authorization in the United States and full approval in Japan.Gilead had, on June 30, priced the drug at $2,340 per patient for wealthier nations, a price that patient advocates in the US have called "outrageous", particularly since remdesivir was developed with financial support from the US government. The overall number of global COVID-19 cases has increased to over 10.6 million, while the deaths have soared to more than 515,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University. The US accounted for the world's highest number of infections and fatalities with 2,685,806 and 128,061, respectively, according to the CSSE.