The Guardian reported (March 18) that a Chinese official of the S&T Ministry said the Japanese flu drug called ' ' and developed by a subsidiary of Fujifilm, was 'clearly effective' in treating coronavirus. The S&T official, Zhang Xinmin, said favipiravir had produced encouraging outcomes in clinical trials in Wuhan and Shenzhen involving 340 patients. He said “It has a high degree of safety and is clearly effective in treatment.” Public broadcaster NHK said patients who were given the medicine in Shenzhen turned negative for the virus after a median of four days after becoming positive, compared with a median of 11 days for those who were not treated with the drug. In addition, X-rays confirmed improvements in lung condition in about 91% of the patients who were treated with favipiravir, compared to 62% or those without the drug. Fujifilm Toyama Chemical, which developed the drug – also known as Avigan – in 2014, has declined to comment on the claims. Doctors in Japan are using the same drug in clinical studies on coronavirus patients with mild to moderate symptoms, hoping it will prevent the virus from multiplying in patients. But a Japanese health ministry source suggested the drug was not as effective in people with more severe symptoms. “We’ve given Avigan to 70 to 80 people, but it doesn’t seem to work that well when the virus has already multiplied,” the source told the Mainichi Shimbun. The same limitations had been identified in studies involving coronavirus patients using a combination of the HIV antiretrovirals lopinavir and ritonavir, the source added. In 2016, the Japanese government supplied favipiravir as an emergency aid to counter the Ebola virus outbreak in Guinea. Favipiravir would need government approval for full-scale use on Covid-19 patients, since it was originally intended to treat flu. A health official told the Mainichi the drug could be approved as early as May. “But if the results of clinical research are delayed, approval could also be delayed.”
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