Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) has been working with regulatory authorities to start additional expanded access programs for remdesivir, its investigational medicine for COVID-19, Chairman and CEO Daniel O'Day wrote on the company's website.

Such programs allow hospitals or physicians to apply for emergency use of the treatment for multiple severely ill patients at a time.

Even though the medicine isn't yet approved for use by any regulatory authorities, Gilead is taking the step of of expanding production to increase supply.

"As a result we have reduced the end-to-end manufacturing timeline from approximately one year, to around six months," O'Day wrote.

Its existing supply, including finished product and investigational medicine in final stages of production, amounts to 1.5M individual doses, which could equate to more than 140,000 treatment courses for patients.

Gilead is providing all of its existing supply at no cost to treat patients with the most severe symptoms of COVID-19.

Sets a goal of producing more than 500,000 treatment courses by October and more than 1M treatment courses by the end of the year.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has recommended that in order to be prepared for COVID-19 becoming a seasonal occurrence, drug manufacturers should take the risk to ramp up production of therapeutics before phase 2 trials begin.