Fujifilm ramps up production of flu drug Avigan as possible COVID-19 treatment

Fujifilm says it is set up to offer Avigan to any nation that wants to attempt it as a potential treatment for COVID-19. Be that as it may, even as it has restarted creation, the Japanese drugmaker feels compelled to set the record straight about the influenza drug.  

“Avigan has never been distributed in the market and is not available at hospitals and pharmacies in Japan or overseas,” it said in an announcement.

The medication, created by Fujifilm unit Toyama Chemical, was affirmed in 2014 as an influenza treatment however possibly to be utilized if different medicines demonstrate inadequate against a novel or reappearing flu re-emerging influenza virus. infection. 

The Japanese organization gave the explanation Friday as enthusiasm for the medication manufactures. That follows reports that clinical preliminaries of the medication in China demonstrated it powerful against COVID-19. Throughout the end of the week, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the government would start preliminaries of the medication on COVID-19 in cooperation with different nations and increase production with the point of a quick approval, the Nikkei Asia Review reports.

Fujifilm called attention to in its announcement that favipiravir, active pharmaceutical ingredient in the tablet, has an  “mechanism of action that prevents the propagation of viruses…that might  have an antiviral effect on the novel coronavirus." COVID-19 is classified into the same type (single-stranded RNA virus) as influenza virus. To test that possibility, clinical trials are underway to seek “clear evidence of the drug's efficacy and safety,” Fujifilm said.

Avigan has been turned out previously, including in  2015 against Ebola and in 2016 for avian flu. At that point, the organization mentioned this prophetic objective fact: 

"The need to grow new medications for treating flu has come in the midst of mounting concerns- - as of late that avian flu infections could change into another kind of infection, fit for human-to-human transmission. Such a change might trigger a pandemic."