While the world is still researching on COVID-19 vaccine, Russia is all set to give its first approved drug to treat COVID-19 patients starting next week, reported Reuters.
This move is seen as a hope to ease the strain of the health system and return to normalcy.
According to Reuters, Russian hospitals can give the antiviral drug, registered under the name Avifavir to COVID-19 patients from June 11, the head of Russia's RDIF sovereign wealth fund said adding that the manufacturer of the drug would manufacture enough to treat around 60,000 patients in a month.
Well, there is no vaccine for COVID-19 yet and human trials of the existing antiviral drugs are yet to show results.
Antiviral drug Remdesivir according to experts have shown some results and is being given to patients by some countries under emergency use rules.
What is the new drug Russia is looking at?
Avifavir, generically known as Favipiravir, was first developed in the late 1990s by a Japanese company which was later bought by Fujifilm.
Speaking about the drug, RDIF head Kirill Dmitriev told Reuters that Russian scientists had modified the drug to enhance it adding that Moscow would be ready to share further details of those modifications in about two weeks.
Similarly, Japan has been trying out the same dug which is known as Avigan in the country. Japan PM Shinzo Abe has applauded it and promised $128 million as government funds which is yet to be approved for use.
The drug made it to the list of drugs approved by the Russian Government on Saturday.
Dmitriev further said that clinical trials of the drug has been conducted on 330 people so far and showed successful results in most cases within four days.
He added that the Health Ministry had approved the drug under a special accelerated process and the manufacuring had begun in March.
“We believe this is a game changer. It will reduce strain on the healthcare system, we’ll have fewer people getting into a critical condition,” said Dmitriev, quoted Reuters. “We believe that the drug is key to resuming full economic activity in Russia,” he added.