What the lessons learned from an Ebola outbreak, and an experimental drug, can teach us about treating COVID-19.
Along with Japan, several countries have built up reserves of the drug over the years. The U.S. Department of Defense bought 6,000 courses of the drug in 2016 as a potential therapeutic against the seasonal flu and the government of the United Arab Emirates stockpiled 50,000 courses as a potential therapeutic against MERS China has an unknown quantity of the drug, but its stockpile is likely significant, since Chinese factories have recently been producing generics .
Kaszynski and Yamada swiftly realized that, like influenza A and B, which are two primary causes of the seasonal flu, SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, is an RNA virus—which means Fujifilm’s drug could, potentially, work against it. “Specifically, favipiravir targets something called an RNA polymerase, basically an enzyme that the virus needs to replicate itself inside of a cell,” Kaszynski says. “The coronavirus has the same enzyme that the influenza virus has.
On Feb. 4, only a few days after Kasynski and Yamada returned from DRC, the journal Cell Research publishedfrom Chinese researchers that recommended live trials of several drugs, including favipiravir, to judge their effectiveness against the new coronavirus. At the time “I was thinking most probably it’s going to work,” says Kaszynski.
Even as Japan has allowed off-label use for the drug against COVID-19, Fujifilm have been careful not to trumpet the effects of their drug. “The scientific evidence is limited,” Yamada says, and it is unclear on what level of severity cases the drug will work. As with Ebola, the drug appears to work better on people who have lower levels of the novel coronavirus in their system, but dosing at the moment is still being worked out.
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