国内英语资讯:China Focus: China rallies scientific efforts for effective treatments amid epidemic_时事

国内英语资讯:China Focus: China rallies scientific efforts for effective treatments amid epidemic

Favipiravir, an influenza drug available on overseas markets, has been put in a clinical trial in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, with 70 patients enlisted, he said.

The initial outcome of the trial shows the drug has relatively obvious efficacy and low adverse reactions.

"Three to four days after treatment, the group that takes the drug has a significantly higher turning-negative rate in the viral nucleic acid than the parallel group," he said.

Remdesivir is developed against Ebola infections by Gilead Sciences, an American pharmaceutical company. It has shown fairly good antiviral activity against the novel coronavirus at the cellular level.

The China-Japan Friendship Hospital and the Institute of Materia Medica under the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences have been authorized to conduct a clinical trial on the drug in over 10 hospitals in Wuhan, the center of the epidemic in central China's Hubei Province.

The randomized, double-blind clinical trial started on Feb. 6, and about 66 percent of the COVID-19 patients enrolled in the trial will have a chance to take the antiviral drug.

Usually, the ratio of patients taking the trial drug against those in the parallel group is 1:1. However, the ratio in the Remdesivir trial is 2:1, so that more critically ill patients may get better treatment, said Zhao Jianping from the Wuhan-based Tongji Hospital earlier.

The trial will adopt a strict randomized double-blind method, which means both patients and doctors do not know who has taken the trial drug. The effect of Remdesivir will only be revealed after the trial is completed.