JAMA recently published an article about remdesivir’s effect on moderate COVID-19 (Spinner et al.). Scroll down to read the article summary and key takeaways, via the (free!) AMBOSS One-Minute Telegram 
Remdesivir has been proven to shorten time to recovery in severe COVID-19, albeit without a significant effect on overall mortality. This industry-sponsored (Gilead Sciences), multicenter randomized open-label trial studied the effects of remdesivir on moderate COVID-19, defined as radiographic evidence of pulmonary infiltrates and oxygen saturation > 94% on room air.
584 patients were randomized in a 1:1:1 ratio to 5-day remdesivir, 10-day remdesivir, and standard care. The primary outcome was the clinical status on day 11 of the study, measured on a 7-point ordinal scale (1 = death, 7 = discharge).
Patients in the 5-day remdesivir group (but not the 10-day group) were more likely to have a better clinical status on day 11 compared to the standard care group (OR = 1.65; 95% CI, 1.09-2.48; P = 0.02). However, no significant difference in the time to improvement of ≥ 1 or ≥ 2 points in the clinical scale in the remdesivir groups vs. standard care was found. Discharge rates peaked after each group’s completion of remdesivir treatment.
One limitation was the nonblinded design, since completion of treatment with remdesivir may have influenced the investigator’s decision to discharge patients and, therefore, could have influenced the study outcome.
The take‑home message? While 5-day remdesivir was associated with improvement according to the clinical status scale in hospitalized patients with moderate COVID-19, the effect was not clinically significant and may have been an artifact of the nonblinded study design. Based partially on this study, the FDA has authorized remdesivir to treat all hospitalized patients with COVID-19.