Now, Covid pill from Optimus Pharma

Hyderabad: City-based Optimus Pharma received permission from DCGI for its Covid-19 pill Molnupiravir under the brand name Molcovir, which is restricted for emergency use. It launched Molnupiravir capsules 200 mg (Molcovir 200) in to the market to serve the country considering this emergency situation and unmet medical need.

With this, the company can conduct Phase III clinical trial for orally administered Molnupiravir capsules on patients with mild Covid-19. Given the surge of new Covid variants such as Omicron, it is essential to introduce more oral drugs with strong antiviral activity .

Dr D Srinivasa Reddy, Chairman and Managing Director, Optimus, said: "The clinical trial on 1218 patients has shown promising results of Molnupiravir. It is proven in successfully reducing viral load effectively with RTPCR negativity on day five was 71 per cent patients in treatment group as compared to 51.6 percent in Standard of Care (SoC) group, 97.3 per cent in treatment group and 84 per cent in SoC group on day ten, and nearly all the patients recovered in 14 to 28 days of the treatment duration. The trial has also shown promising symptomatic improvement in the patient's health.

The results indicate that the addition of Molnupiravir to SoC results in - greater reduction of viral load as indicated by significant increase in CT values of RTPCR tests, higher proportion of patients achieving RTPCR negativity on days five and ten, all the adverse events reports resolved completely and no mortality was observed during the study.