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Brinton Pharmaceuticals has got the approval of the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for marketing favipiravir under the brand name Faviton for the management of mild to moderate covid-19 patients, the company said on Thursday.
The emerging favourable global clinical evidence suggests that favipiravir is an effective treatment option in the management of mild to moderate covid-19, said company officials. This medication is administered orally and thus is more convenient than intravenously administered medicines.
In India, favipiravir was first approved by the regulatory authorities in June under emergency use authorization to treat covid-19 patients, the company said.
Faviton will be available in 200mg tablets and will also be exported globally, Brinton Pharmaceuticals said. The medicine will be available in strips of 10 tablets and boxes of 50 tablets, which is a rational pack for the treatment. It has a shelf life of 90 days.
“We always wanted to launch an evidence-based cure to combat covid-19. Our strategic intent will be to improve access through our strong distribution network, which will help make Faviton available across all covid treatment centres. The maximum retail price is ₹59 per tablet,” said Rahulkumar Darda, chairman and managing director, Brinton Pharmaceuticals.
The number of people succumbing to covid-19 hit the 30,000 mark on Thursday as the total number of covid-19 cases reached 1,269,532.
For the second day in a row, recoveries in a single day continued to witness a significant rise, with 28,557 patients being cured in the last 24 hours, the highest in a day. The total number of recoveries has jumped to 803,286, even as the recovery rate has increased appreciably to stand at 63.18%.
The high number of patients getting cured and discharged has contributed to the increasing gap between recoveries and total active cases, which was pegged at 436,015 on Thursday.
The Union government continued to coordinate its efforts with those of states and Union territories by sending central teams of experts to areas that are witnessing an increase in caseload and also by handholding of covid hospitals in states through a teleconsultation programme led by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi.
“The case fatality rate in India is 2.41% and is steadily declining. This has also helped in the reduction of the actual case load of covid-19 cases,” said the health ministry.
Meanwhile, the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), Bengaluru, in scientific collaboration with Manipal Hospitals, Bengaluru, and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)—Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), is developing SwasthVayu, a Made in India non-invasive ventilator.
Public health experts have called for increasing health infrastructure and making medicines available.
“Our health infrastructure needs to be revamped significantly as the number of cases is rising,” said Arup Mitra, a health economist and professor of economy at Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University.
“It will be beneficial to help patients access the prescription for the medicine without much problem so that they can start taking the doses immediately. The other important thing that needs to be practised by the people are social distancing norms. There are serious violations in the day to day life, which is why the number of cases is increasing rapidly,” he said.
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