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Updated 04 Jul, 2020 01:33am

Pakistan All Set To Produce And Export Antiviral Drug To Fight Coronavirus

Awais Awan

Government of Pakistan announced this Friday that it will begin production and export of the antiviral drug Remdesivir for treating the respiratory disease caused by novel coronavirus.

Dr. Zafar Mirza, Special Assistant to PM Imran Khan, told the media in a presser in Islamabad that a local pharmaceutical company named Ferozons Laboratories Ltd., will make the medicine in partnership with America’s biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences , which originally developed Remdesivir.

https://twitter.com/pid_gov/status/1261276087369302023?s=19

 

He noted that this would make Pakistan one of only three countries to produce and export the drug.
Dr. Mirza said that five companies in the world had been granted the license to manufacture the drug. “Among those five companies ,one of them is a Pakistani company,” he said, referring to it as a “breakthrough news”.

He further stated:

"The manufacturing of this injectable medicine will start within 6-8 weeks and it will be available not only for coronavirus patients in Pakistan, but it will also be exported to about 127 countries."

 

The antiviral drug which was originally developed as an Ebola treatment has been gaining traction as a potential Covid-19 treatment for some time now. It works by attacking an enzyme that a virus needs in order to replicate inside our cells.

Osman Waheed, the CEO of the Ferozosons Pharmaceutical Company, speaking alongside Dr. Mirza , said that once production begins, the medicine will be exported to both developed and underdeveloped nations. He stated:

“We are committed together with Gilead Sciences to produce the drug at minimum cost and make it most accessible in the developing world."

 

Remdesivir is a broad-spectrum antiviral medication developed by Gilead Sciences. For past several weeks this drug is being tested as a specific treatment for combating novel Coronavirus , the virus which has ravaged the world affecting more than 4.8 million people around the globe. The drug has been authorized for emergency use in the U.S. and approved for use in Japan for people with severe symptoms.

It's observed that Remdesivir cuts the duration of symptoms from 15 days down to 11 in clinical trials. The clinical trial was run by the America's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in which 1,063 people took part. Some patients were given the drug while others received a placebo.
According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who's heading USA's war against COVID-19 and who runs the NIAID :

"The data shows remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant and positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery."

It should be noted that its impact on fatalities is not as clear-cut. The mortality rate was 8% in people given this drug and 11.6% in those given a placebo, but this result was not statistically significant, meaning scientists cannot tell if the difference is real. But nevertheless, it's still more promising than any remedy available at the moment.

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