Meg Tirrell / CNBC With The Good News: Gilead's First Experimental COVID-19 Therapeutic Now Fully FDA Approved

I am a little tardy with this one -- but I was distracted last evening, and enjoyed watching Joe Biden run circles around Trump. In any event, Gilead has traded over $66 in the premarket this morning, putting it up nearly seven per cent in two days, due solely to this news.

And as fate would have it, one of the then-still experimental drugs that helped nurse Trump back from respiratory distress during his acute bout of COVID-19 last month [can it only have been three weeks ago?]. . . is now FDA approved. No word on pricing just yet, out of Gilead. Here's the bit:

. . .In May, the FDA granted the drug an emergency use authorization, allowing hospitals and doctors to use it on patients hospitalized with the disease even though the medication had not been formally approved by the agency. The intravenous drug has helped shorten the recovery time of some hospitalized Covid-19 patients. It was one of the drugs used to treat President Donald Trump, who tested positive for the virus earlier this month.

The drug will be used for Covid-19 patients at least 12 years old and requiring hospitalization, Gilead said. Remdesivir is now the first and only fully approved treatment in the U.S. for Covid-19, which has infected more than 41.3 million people worldwide and killed more than 1 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. . . .

Onward to another first day delivery (soggy at that!) of the latest Apple handset product -- the 12 Pro, arriving by 11 AM CDT, my fed ex ap tells me. Grinning ear to ear, just like eight, six and four, and two ago. . . .

नमस्ते