Interesting article on favipiravir.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/business/japan-avigan-coronavirus.html#click=https://t.co/a7EX1Awj96
This is a Japanese developed and made drug, one of the drugs that the Chinese approved for covid back in February.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202002/17/WS5e49efc2a310128217277fa3.html
Curiously, many “news” reports said it was a Chinese-developed drug and called it “favilavir” or “fapilavir” e.g.
https://www.zmescience.com/ This could just be misreporting, or Chinese disinformation because they don’t want to be seen using a Japanese drug, but anyway most of the “cure for Covid found” stories running in February picked up the erroneous “Chinese-developed” and “favilavir” descriptions.
No, the Chinese didn’t have real data supporting these approvals, just anecdotal reports and tiny, poorly run clinical trials from the chaos of Wuhan. The biggest driver (my opinion) was probably a political imperative to be seen as “having found a treatment” preferably with a home-grown drug. The others included hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir. I think a Chinese entity filed for a Chinese patent on remdesivir around that time, and various Chinese pharma companies started making remdesivir (but not very well, as I’ve previously mentioned).
I haven’t heard of any success for favipiravir in clinical trials for covid. The drug seems to have sunk back into obscurity outside of Japan - a somehow-got-approved drug that doesn’t seem to be effective at treating any disease and can cause major birth defects.
Until reading the NYT article below, I didn’t realize that the Japanese govt seems to be doing with favipiravir what the US govt has been trying to do with hydroxychloroquine - use the govt’s influence and bully pulpit to push a drug into widespread use before and without sufficient data showing its efficacy or safety.
Incidentally, I think Trump has stopped publicly pushing HCQ as a covid treatment. At least I haven’t heard of him doing so lately. I don’t know if political appointees are still trying to pressure for the drug’s use, or if they’ve decided to wait for better data.