Accordingly on june 21st, the hyderabad based pharmaceutical company Hetero announced in a press release that it has got approval from the Drug Controller of india to make and market a generic version of the antiviral drug remdesivir in india under the name Covifor. The same day, Cipla, the Mumbai-based pharmaceutical firm also announced their own version of remdesivir, called Cipremi. Remdesivir is originally owned by the American Biotechnology firm Gilead Sciences. The drug had got emergency use authorization for severe COVID-19 cases (suspected or confirmed) by the US Food and Drug Administration in May on the basis of the existing evidence for its efficiency in the management of the infection.
Covifor is the generic version of remdesivir being marketed by Hetero in India. Remdesivir is a nucleoside analogue which was developed in 2010 to fight the Ebola outbreak in Africa. Though it was well-tolerated in ebola patients, it wasn’t as effective as some other therapies. Later, the drug was found to be effective against SARS and MERS, two diseases caused by coronaviruses that are closely related to the COVID-19 causing coronavirus. Various trials have been conducted to study the effects of remdesivir against COVID-19. One such trial conducted by the National Institute of health, USA suggested that remdesivir can improve the recovery time of COVID-19 patients by 31% and the patients are able to leave the hospital on day 11 as compared to day 15 when they got standard treatment.
Results from the clinical trials conducted by Gilead Sciences show that severe COVID-19 patients showed improvement in symptoms within 10 and 11 days when they were given remdesivir for 5 and 10 days respectively. About 65% of people with moderate disease show improvement by day 11 with a 5-day treatment as compared to those who got standard care. Remdesivir is currently only authorized to be given intravenously. There is a risk that it can cause an infusion-related reaction (hypersensitivity to the drug administration) in patients. An infusion-related reaction shows up as nausea, vomiting, sweating and shivering.
