The federal government finally announced initial plans to distribute Gilead's coronavirus drug remdesivir after days of confusion

The federal government released its initial distribution plans today for the promising coronavirus drug, remdesivir, which was approved for emergency use last week. 

The drug, donated by manufacturer Gilead Sciences, "will be used to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients in areas of the country hardest hit by the pandemic," the US Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) said in a press release.

On May 7, ASPR started the process of delivering cases of the drug, which contain 40 vials each, to Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, and New Jersey. Cases have already been sent to Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia.

How many cases of the drug each state gets varies, with New York receiving 565 cases, for example, and Iowa receiving 10. The government's press release contains a full list of how much of the drug each state is getting.

A vial of the drug remdesivir.

 Associated Press

It's up to state health departments to distribute the doses to hospitals "because state and local health departments have the greatest insight into community-level needs in the COVID-19 response, including appropriate distribution of a treatment in limited supply," according to the press release. 

Eventually, ASPR said it expects to deliver remdesivir to all 50 states, territories, the Veterans Health Administration and the Indian Health Services. The government didn't provide a timeline for the shipments, or say how it decided how much of the drug each state will get.

Days after remdesivir was approved for emergency use, frontline doctors still had little information about how and when the drug would actually get into their hands in order to treat patients who urgently needed it, Business Insider first reported on Wednesday.

"There is currently significant confusion and lack of information regarding the criteria the federal government is using to allocate this limited supply of donated remdesivir," Dr. Julie Ann Justo, an infectious-disease physician at Prisma Health-Midlands, a health system headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina, previously told Business Insider.