Gilead Sciences Inc. GILD, +0.01% said Friday that most COVID-19 patients who were given one of the company's antiviral drugs "demonstrated clinical improvement and no new safety signals were identified" with the use of the drug, called remdesivir. The 53 patients given remdesivir under a "compassionate use basis" had been hospitalized with severe complications from the illness. Compassionate-use data have limitations and multiple later-phase studies are ongoing to determine the safety and efficacy of the drug for the treatment of COVID-19, Gilead said. Detailed results of the company's analysis were published Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine. Remdesivir is not yet licensed nor approved anywhere in the world and has not been demonstrated to be safe or effective for the treatment of COVID-19, Gilead said. There is no current treatment for the illness that has killed more than 100,000 people by Friday and sickened 1.65 million people around the world.