China accused of obstructing COVID-19 cure research by shutting down promising Gilead trial

China has been accused of pushing back on and cracking down on coronavirus-related research happening inside its borders in a bid to stop its allies from procuring a cure first.

The news came after the CEO of Gilead Sciences Inc., an American biotechnology company that researches, develops, and commercializes drugs, reported that Beijing had shut down a branch of testing for Remdesivir.

Remdesivir was originally developed as a treatment for Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus infections but is now being studied as a possible post-infection treatment for COVID-19, which is caused by the novel coronavirus.

The trial was reportedly seeing the drug used on patients in "severe condition" in Wuhan but has since been stopped because the city doesn't have any more in such a condition.

More than 1,870,000 people across the world have tested positive for COVID-19, according to John Hopkins University's live-tracking dashboard for the disease, with 116,000 dying from the virus.

The US has more than a quarter of the cases worldwide, with Spain, Italy, France, and Germany all reporting more than 100,000 cases each. China, which was considered as the epicenter of the outbreak, has seemingly all but controlled the disease and has barely reported an increase in its 82,000-odd cases in the past few weeks.

Wuhan reopened its borders on April 8 after a 76-day lockdown, though the country's central government has still promised it will be enforcing strict checks on anyone entering or leaving the city. 

However, some believe that China is not reporting its numbers accurately and have questioned if there are ulterior motives over its shuttering of Gilead's study, which has shown promise in healing moderately sick patients in the West.

In an open letter addressing the stop, the company's CEO Daniel O'Day said that while the data from its global trial would be available by the end of April, they still didn't know the results from China.

"We know that there is tremendous interest around when the data from these trials will be available and what they will tell us about Remdesivir," he wrote. "We feel the urgency as we wait for science to speak. With every day that goes by, the desperate need to equip healthcare workers and their patients with a safe, effective treatment becomes more pressing. We are working with intense speed to determine whether Remdesivir could be an option and we are committed to sharing information when it becomes available to us."

"We expect that we will have preliminary data from the study of Remdesivir in severe patients at the end of April and will work quickly to interpret and share the findings," he continued. "The publication of data from the China Remdesivir trials rests with the Chinese investigators, but we have been informed that the study in patients with severe symptoms was stopped due to stalled enrollment. We look forward to reviewing the published data when available. In May, we anticipate the initial data from the placebo-controlled NIAID trial as well as data from the Gilead study of patients with moderate symptoms of COVID-19."

While the drug is by no means a panacea, analysts have said that there is enough in the data "to believe there is some chance Remdesivir, along with other meds in development, could play a potential role helping somewhat blunt morbidity/mortality."