After Indian pharma firm Glenmark Pharmaceuticals launched antiviral drug Favipiravir as "FabiFlu" for COVID-19 patients on last Saturday for patients with mild and moderate symptoms, another multi-center Phase-II drug trial being done by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) shows that its drug can cost lesser by at least 20-30 percent of the current price.

A source aware of the development said to India Today, "Our projection is 20-30 per cent lesser than the current price point." As per the results, it could lead to a major reduction in the cost of the drug required for the treatment of mild and moderate symptoms of coronavirus.

The CSIR had done end-to-end synthesis of Favipiravir in April. It is now conducting multi-centre Phase-II trials of the drug with Mumbai-based pharma company Cipla which is due to make public the trial results soon.

Meanwhile, Glenmark has received manufacturing and marketing approval from India’s drug regulator, making FabiFlu the first oral Favipiravir-approved medication in India for the treatment of COVID-19. Favipiravir is backed by strong clinical evidence showing encouraging results in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19. The antiviral offers broad-spectrum RNA virus coverage2 with clinical improvement noted across age groups 20 to >90 years.3 Favipiravir can be used in COVID-19 patients with co-morbid conditions such as diabetes and heart disease with mild to moderate COVID 19 symptoms.It offers a rapid reduction in viral load within 4 days, and provides faster symptomatic and radiological improvement. Of most importance, Favipiravir has shown clinical improvement of up to 88% in COVID-19 mild to moderate COVID 19 cases.

Faviflu is priced at Rs 103 per tablet wit strip of 34 costing Rs3,500 while Cipla claimed that they will be launching the drug at 20% to 30% cheaper due to the synthetic technology employed.

CSIR has identified top 25 drugs/drug candidates for repurposing to provide drugs for coronavirus patients in India. Among these top 25 drugs, Favipiravir, a broad-spectrum inhibitor of viral RNA polymerase, has emerged as one of the most promising drugs.

According to the latest figures from Health Ministry, the number of patients recovering from COVID-19 continues to increase. So far, a total of 2,27,755 patients have been cured. During the last 24 hours, a total of 13,925 COVID-19 patients have been cured. The recovery rate has further improved to 55.49% amongst COVID-19 patients. Presently, there are 1,69,451 active cases and all are under active medical supervision.

Today, the number of recovered patients has crossed the number of active patients by 58,305. The number of government labs has been increased to 722 and private labs has been increased to 259 (a total of 981). The number of samples being tested every day also continues to grow. In the last 24 hours, 1,90,730 samples were tested. The total number of samples tested thus far is 68,07,226.

With Story Input from India Today