Employees work in the physical-chemical laboratory of quality control at the Russian drugmaker Pharmasyntez in Irkutsk, Russia. The first large shipment of the drug to combat COVID-19 "Rediform", a generic version of U.S. COVID-19 drug Remdesivir, is ready for release. Remdesivir was granted emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May after it was shown to shorten hospital stays for COVID-19 patients in a government-run clinical trial.