在中国临床试验中，日本流感药物在冠状病毒治疗中似乎“有效”
日本制流感药物favipiravir（也称为Avigan）
已被证明可有效减少患者COVID-19病毒的持续时间，
并且改善了接受该药物治疗的人的肺部疾病，
根据中医部门在武汉和深圳对患病患者进行的临床试验结果。
The trials
involved 340 patients in total, and since they drug has already been developed and approved for use in treating flu, it has a “high degree of safety,”
according to China science and technology ministry official Zhang Xinmin, who spoke to reporters on Wednesday according to The Guardian.
The tests
showed a reduction in the period during which patients tested positive for the new coronavirus from 11 days down to just four,
and showed improvements in the lung condition of around 91 percent of patients treated with favipiravir, compared to just 62 percent for those without among the trial participants.
The Chinese studies are not the only attempt to test the efficacy of the drug in COVID-19 treatment – Japanese doctors are bonding their own studies.
A Japanese health ministry source
told Japanese newspaper the Manichi Shimbun that the drug so far has been given to around 70 to 80 people, but that early results suggest it isn’t effective in treating those with more severe symptoms where the virus has already multiplied to a much greater extend.
Still, a treatment that is effective in reducing the duration of the presence of the virus even in milder cases, and in lessening the impacts in moderate symptomatic patients,
would be a huge benefit to the ongoing fight against the coronavirus.
Any approvals for use of favipiravir would of course require further clinical testing, followed by approval of widespread use by each country’s relevant medical treatment regulating body.
TechCrunch