An antiviral Covid-19 drug developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will be made available for emergency use starting tomorrow, reports claimed.
According to NDTV, Defence minister Rajnath Singh will distribute 10,000 doses of the drug to various hospitals in Delhi.
The drug was approved by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), earlier this week. It is an oral drug and can cure moderate to severe Covid-19 infections, officials said.
These developments come at a time when many states and Union Territories are facing a shortage of key medicines used for the treatment of Covid-19.
Clinical trials of DRDO’s drug-- 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) showed that it helps in faster recovery of hospitalised Covid patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence, DCGI had said earlier.
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"In the ongoing second Covid-19 wave, a large number of patients are facing severe oxygen dependency and need hospitalisation.
"The drug is expected to save precious lives due to the mechanism of operation of the drug in infected cells. This also reduces the hospital stay of Covid-19 patients," the defence ministry had said.
The ministry had further said that the anti-Covid-19 therapeutic application of 2-DG drug has been developed by the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), a leading laboratory of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), in collaboration with Dr Reddy's Laboratories (DRL) in Hyderabad.
