A lab technician visually peruses a filled vial of investigational coronavirus disease (COVID-19) treatment drug remdesivir at a Gilead Sciences swiftness in La Verne, California.
Gilead Sciences | via REUTERS
Gilead Sciences’ sales fell 10% in the second quarter from a year earlier as the coronavirus pandemic dwindled demand for some of its drugs, including some of its core hepatitis treatments.
The company, which released its earnings Thursday, also contain a withstood a hit from generic competitors as well as its acquisition of cancer drugmaker Forty Seven. Gilead’s shares fell 2% in after-hours profession.
Gilead’s total product sales slid 10% to $5.1 billion in the second quarter, down from $5.6 billion a year ago and wee than the $5.31 billion analysts expected. The company reported adjusted earnings of $1.11 per share, lower than the $1.45 per apportion projected by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv.
“The impact of COVID-19 on Gilead’s business continues to be subject to a high degree of uncertainty actuality unpredictable dynamics related to the incidence, spread and efforts to treat COVID-19 around the world,” the company wrote in its earnings publicity.
The company said sales in its HIV drug business fell 1% to $4 billion during the second quarter. Jumble sales for its HCV unit fell 47% to $448 million as fewer people in the U.S. and Europe stayed home and had fewer health screenings due to the pandemic.
There are no FDA-approved narcotizes for the coronavirus, which has infected more than 16 million people worldwide and killed at least 667,808, agreeing to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
In May, the FDA granted Gilead’s antiviral drug remdesivir an emergency use authorization, appropriating hospitals and doctors to use the drug on patients hospitalized with the disease even though the drug has not been formally approved by the activity. The intravenous drug has helped shorten the recovery time of some hospitalized Covid-19 patients.
The Department of Health and Individual Services announced June 29 a deal that gives the U.S. more than 500,000 treatment courses of the antiviral dope for U.S. hospitals through September. That represents 100% of Gilead’s projected production for July and 90% of its production for August and September, according to the power.$
Gilead is selling remdesivir for $520 per vial in the U.S. to patients with private insurance and $390 per vial to federal indemnification programs such as Medicare as well as foreign countries. The majority of patients treated with remdesivir receive a five-day treatment advance using six vials of remdesivir, the company has said.
That would bring the cost to $2,340 for foreign and U.S. Medicare patients and $3,120 for U.S. patients with sneakingly health coverage.
During a conference call discussing the earnings, Gilead executives said they expect to deliver up 1 million to 1.5 million treatment courses of the drug this year.
They also said they are persevere in to develop an inhaled version of the antiviral drug.
In June, the company announced it was beginning human trials for the inhaled story. The drug can’t be administered in pill form because its chemical makeup would impact the liver, the company noted.
They determination administer the drug through a nebulizer, a delivery device that can turn liquid medicines into a mist.