The COVID-19 task force of Mumbai has urged the Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to do the necessary paperwork to give Mumbai access to Remdesivir and Favipiravir. These two medicines have proven to have a track record against the coronavirus globally.
The task force has put forward an official letter to the Chief Minister, requesting the drugs, adding that a couple of clinical trials should not put a pause on doctors providing the drugs to the people suffering from COVID-19 when it is a globally acknowledged fact that the usage of these drugs has helped the patients.
There are at least 50 different drugs being tested in the country ranging from HIV protease inhibitors to antivirals to ACE inhibitors, anti-inflammatory, pneumonia, respiratory, malaria, TB, arthritis, leprosy, immune modulators and anti-diarrhoea. The new arrival in the treatment for the coronavirus is Remdesivir, an RNA polymerase inhibitor which stops the virus from replicating. Favipiravir, on the other hand, is a purine nucleic acid analogue and a potent RNA dependent RNA polymerase inhibitor approved for use in influenza-like cases.
In order to ramp up the testing capacities, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has issued revised guidelines for TrueNat testing and said that it is now a comprehensive assay for screening and confirmation of COVID-19 cases. Earlier on April 10, the ICMR had approved the use of TrueNat system for conducting coronavirus tests but recommended it only as a screening test.
In a massive development on Monday, the ICMR has revised its testing strategy for coronavirus cases. As per the new guidelines, asymptomatic direct and high-risk contacts of COVID-19 positive patients must be tested between 5-10 days of coming into contact. Maharashtra currently has cases of coronavirus, with cases being in Mumbai itself. This pushes forth the need to develop a widely accepted drug to be able to treat the contagious disease.
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