Avigan For Coronavirus Treatment To Be Tested In Hungary
- 25 May 2020 8:53 AM
- Hungary Matters
Hungary has been selected as one of the first countries to get Avigan for treatment of Covid-19 patients and will run further clinical tests on the drug with the active ingredient favipiravir registered in Japan, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in a Facebook video on Saturday.
A shipment of 12,200 Avigan pills – enough to treat 100 patients – arrived in Hungary on Saturday morning, Szijjártó said, adding that the medicine had been sent to the research centre of the University of Pécs, in southern Hungary.
Avigan was registered in Japan as an influenza drug but has been found effective against the novel coronavirus.
Professor Gábor L Kovács said in the same video that the pills will be used for clinical tests on 100 Hungarian patients “under controlled conditions and with the utmost care”.
In another Facebook post on Sunday, Szijjártó said that 14 aircraft and two lorries had arrived in Hungary from China to deliver 501,000 masks, 2,773 patient monitors and 309 ventilators in the past four days.
Including these, more than 1,000 ventilators have arrived in Hungary in the past week, and more will be delivered on Monday, he added. Sufficient levels and quality of stocks is a fundamental condition for long-term health-care defence, the foreign minister said.
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