NEW DELHI: A Hyderabad based pharmaceutical company has dispatched first 20,000 vials of the generic version of Ebola drug remdesivir that has shown some efficacy in moderately sick Covid-19 patients to five states in the country.
The states that are getting the first batch of the medicine, an intravenous formulation, include Delhi, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Telangana. The company, Hetero, which has prepared the first generic version of the drug in India, has named it Covifor and kept a price of `5,400 for a vial of 100 mg, sources in the Central Drugs Standards Organisation said.
The medicine, however, will not be available in the open market and can be procured only by hospitals as it has been granted only a restricted emergency use authorisation, officials said adding that patients or their kin will have to give informed consent before getting the experimental drug administered.
The recommended dose for adults and paediatric patients is 200 mg on Day 1 followed by once daily maintenance doses of 100 mg for five days, which means the cost of the medicine’s course per patient will be Rs 37,800.
So far in India, remdesivir has been tried only as part of a WHO solidarity trial —undertaken to assess the efficacy of several repurposed drugs against Covid-19. The drug has emerged as one of the few repurposed medicines that has been found to help Covid 19 patients.
The National Institutes of Health in the US had last month said its data from the drug’s trial showed it offers the most benefit for Covid-19 patients who need extra oxygen, but do not require mechanical ventilation.
Preliminary results had shown that patients who received remdesivir had a 31 per cent faster recovery than those who received placebo. Hetero’s next batch of the drug is likely to be sent to Kolkata, Indore, Bhopal, Lucknow, Patna, Bhubaneshwar, Ranchi, Vijayawada, Kochi, Trivandrum and Goa as the company has set a target to manufacture one lakh vials of the drug in three-four weeks.
Six companies can sell the drug
Cipla and Hetero are among 6 companies that have licensing agreements with US-based Gilead to make and sell remdesivir in 127 countries.