(Bloomberg) -- NRx Pharmaceuticals Inc. soared in premarket trading after an analysis showed that its drug helped patients who had been treated with Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir survive Covid-19.

Patients who received NRx’s Zyesami after remdesivir had 2.5-fold increased odds of being alive and free of respiratory failure after 60 days, compared with those that received a placebo, the company said Monday in a statement. The shares gained as much as 44% in trading before U.S. markets opened. 

Doctors are looking for new treatments for severely ill Covid patients as the U.S. and Europe contend with threatening case surges. Experimental drugs from Merck & Co. and Pfizer Inc. are also hoped to help contend with the upswing, as well as the possibility of another wave powered by the recently discovered omicron strain of the new coronavirus. 

While the Merck and Pfizer antivirals are intended to be used to keep moderately ill patients out of the hospital, NRx’s is aimed at treatment of severely ill patients. 

U.S. regulators earlier declined to authorize NRx’s drug for emergency use based on existing trial data. NRx said it will submit the new analysis to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in support of emergency use authorization. 

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