Covid-19 has now been declared to be a pandemic by the World Health Organisation. Since the very beginning of the outbreak early in 2020, the pharma industry and the medical community have been focusing their efforts on investigating drugs that can be repurposed to treat the symptoms, as well as developing new vaccines to tackle the virus’s spread.
To date, the Chinese authorities have approved an anti-viral against Covid-19 called fapilavir. This drug, which is manufacture red by Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical, and was developed to treat influenza.
Other antiviral drugs being studied for repurposing are Gilead’s Ebola drug remdesivir, Roche’s rheumatoid arthritis treatment Actemra and AbbVie’s HIV drugs Kaletra and Aluvia.