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The health ministry of Russia approved a flu drug to be used in the fight against the deadly novel coronavirus after the preliminary testing showed promising results. The drug "Avifavir" -- a generic version of the Japanese flu drug "Avigan" -- has been granted a temporary registration certificate as Russia's first COVID-19 drug, according to the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF)’s official statement. RDIF has been taking several effective steps in fighting the pandemic, which included a project to diagnose and treat COVID-19-related pneumonia using CT scans and artificial intelligence technology. Avifavir has been used to treat severe forms of...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A candidate drug for treating the new coronavirus, favipiravir, has produced promising results in early clinical trials in Russia, according to the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which provided 150 million roubles ($2 million) in funding for the project. RDIF head Kirill Dmitriev said 60% of the 40 coronavirus patients taking tablets of favipiravir, which was first developed in Japan under the name Avigan, tested negative for the virus within five days and said the treatment could cut coronavirus recovery times in half. Drugmakers are rushing to develop treatments and vaccines for the highly contagious coronavirus that has...

I’ll start by reminding everyone that I’m not a doctor and have no professional experience in the field of medicine. With that out of the way, I’ll confess that I’ve always been under the impression that diseases caused by a virus can’t be “cured” the way we are able to treat bacterial infections. The most you can generally do is develop a vaccine and try to prevent people from getting sick in the first place.But maybe that isn’t always true. Doctors in Japan have reportedly used a drug developed to treat the flu to eliminate the coronavirus in patients...

US Ebola Death: Antivirals Submitted by admin on Wed, 10/08/2014 - 13:19 The first U.S. Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, has died despite being administered the experimental nucleoside-type antiviral pro-drug Brincidofovir.  How is this possible?  Well , the first problem is that Duncan was not treated until it was far too late for antiviral therapy to work.  Let's take this opportunity to look at some nucleoside antivirals, incuding the drug that was administered to Mr. Duncan in Dallas, TX (Brincidofovir).The first thing to know is remember Brincidofovir and Cidofovir were developed to work against dsDNA Viruses, though Ebola is a...