The interim findings of the trial in which the four drugs were tested in 405 hospitals across 30 countries, covering 11,266 adults, were released on 'medRxiv', a preprint server, on Thursday. The findings are under review for publication in a medical journal.
There is no current evidence from randomised controlled trial to recommend any specific treatment for suspected or confirmed patients with COVID-19.
A trial has shown that plasma therapy does not reduce mortality or prevent progression of COVID-19.
The ministry has removed its earlier recommendation of the use of anti-HIV drug combinations Lopinavir and Ritonavir on a case-to-case basis depending upon the severity of the condition of a patient suffering from coronavirus infection.
Cipla is among the three Indian companies that signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement with US-based Gilead Sciences to make and distribute the latter's repurposed Ebola drug Remdesivir in 127 countries including India.
The rate of doubling of COVID-19 cases has increased to 12.6 days
India has rejected a drug patent application of a United States multinational pharma company, paving the way for easy access to an important life-saving medication for HIV patients across the globe.
In Jaipur, the combination of lopinavir and ritonavir, both second-line HIV drugs, was administered was administered on an elderly Italian couple undergoing treatment for Covid-19 at the SMS Hospital.
The global heath body had earlier suspended the hydroxychloroquine arm of the clinical trials of experimental COVID-19 drugs over safety concerns.
'Testing is a very good strategy if only symptomatic people are transmitting the disease.' 'Here asymptomatic people, with minimum, trivial symptoms, are transmitting too.' 'Testing, treating, tracing contacts and quarantining them -- yes, it will work up to a certain extent.' 'But more important is physical distancing, hand hygiene, cough etiquette and cocooning, protecting with reverse quarantining the most vulnerable people, senior citizens, people with other major medical problems.' 'To me, that makes much more sense.'
'Some of the longer-term implications of COVID-19 are not related to the virus itself.' 'They are actually related to immune responses from the virus.'
'The only idea -- the only idea -- of the shutdown was to buy time.'
'Predictions are that numbers will continue to rise till May end and maybe in the first half of June will be our peak.'
The country had the third-largest number of people living with disease.
