The producer of an experimental antiviral drug says it will cut emergency access, as researchers race for a cure.

Daniel O’Day, the chief executive of Gilead Sciences, at a meeting with the coronavirus task force at the White House on March 2.Credit...Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

Nearly 70 drugs and experimental compounds may be effective in treating the coronavirus, a team of researchers reported on Sunday night.

Some of the medications are already used to treat other diseases, and repurposing them to treat Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, may be faster than trying to invent a new antiviral from scratch, the scientists said.

Among the drugs on the list was remdesivir, an experimental antiviral produced by Gilead Sciences that has been used in emergency cases to treat the corona virus.

But the company on Sunday said it was suspending access to emergency requests for remdesivir, citing an “exponential increase” in such requests as the virus spread to Europe and the United States.

As corona-virus cases have increased around the world, demand has overwhelmed “an emergency treatment access system that was set up for very limited access to investigation medicines and never intended for use in response to a pandemic,” the company said in a statement.

The list of drug candidates appeared in a study published on the website bioRxiv. The researchers have submitted the paper to a journal for publication.

Also on the list was chloroquine, a malaria medication that has been much in the news this past week, thanks to speculation about its use against the coronavirus — some of which was repeated by President Trump at a news briefing at the White House on Friday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, followed the president’s remarks with a warning that there was only “anecdotal evidence” that chloroquine might work.

Reference: New York Times