New York (AFP)

The New York Stock Exchange ended sharply higher on Wednesday, supported by encouraging results from Gilead Sciences biotech treatment for the coronavirus and continued support from the US Central Bank.

Its flagship index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, rose 2.21% to 24,633.86 points and the Nasdaq, with strong technological coloring, from 3.57% to 8,914.71 points.

The broader S&P 500 Index, which represents the 500 largest companies on Wall Street, took 2.66% to 2,939.51 points.

The indices, from the start of the session, benefited from the publication by Gilead Sciences (+ 5.68%) of positive preliminary results from a large clinical trial with its experimental antiviral remdesivir.

"The data show that remdesivir has a clear, significant and positive effect in reducing recovery time" for patients with the new coronavirus Sars-Cov-2, said Anthony Fauci, director of the Institute of Infectious Diseases, in the Oval Office of the White House.

Biotech was cautious, however, recalling that "remdesivir was neither approved nor approved anywhere in the world and had not proven its safety or its effectiveness for the treatment of Covid-19."

The medical journal The Lancet also published inconclusive results from a smaller study in ten hospitals in Wuhan, China.

But these announcements offer investors "like a light at the end of the tunnel," said Shawn Cruz of TD Ameritrade.

They "feel there is going to be an end to this whole situation (...) and are already thinking about the fourth quarter, which will be better than the second," adds Art Hogan of National Holdings.

These potential medical advances have in fact overshadowed the announcement of a fall of 4.8% of US GDP in the first quarter on an annual basis, according to a preliminary estimate from the Commerce Department.

This drop, due to the cessation of economic activity by the world's leading power to stem the coronavirus, puts an end to a decade of growth for the United States.

And the situation should not improve in the second quarter, which could experience an even greater decline.

The American economy will "probably drop at an unprecedented rate in the second quarter," even warned US Central Bank President Jerome Powell during the session.

But to ensure a recovery "as robust as possible", the institution will use "aggressively" all the tools at its disposal, he added.

It has already kept interest rates around 0% and plans to do so until it is satisfied that the economy "survived" this crisis and "is on track to meet its maximum targets and price stability. "

The indices were also carried Wednesday by the jump of the shares Boeing (+ 5.86%) and Alphabet, the parent company of Google (+ 8.89%), after the publication of their quarterly results.

On the bond market, the 10-year rate on US treasury bills rose to 0.6174% from 0.6129% on Tuesday evening.

© 2020 AFP