Efficacy of Favipiravir in Treatment of Mild & Moderate COVID-19 Infection in Nepal

COVID-19 has affected almost all countries in the world. Every other country is constantly working towards its treatment and development of vaccines, with little to no success so far. Recently, several regimens have been tried as antiviral medicine. Among these medicines, Favipiravir is considered a broad-spectrum antiviral with the spectrum of activity noted against a wide range of RNA viruses \& a good oral antiviral drug with \> 97% bioavailability. It has already proved its safety profile as it has received FDA indication for drug-resistant Influenza. There has been increasing evidence of favorable outcome against COVID-19 in terms of early viral clearance \& quicker symptomatic relief however, most of these studies lack strong statistical significance \& are not peer-reviewed. Subjects will be categorized into two arms based on the severity of infection due to COVID-19 defined by NMC guidelines. Each arm will have respective two groups as the study drug group and control group. Based on the sample size calculation, subjects will be stratified \& randomly enrolled in the study after checking the eligibility criteria at the screening visit. About 276 mild patients will be recruited for this trial and 400 moderate patients (including 10% loss ). Study arm groups will receive a Favipiravir treatment of 1800 mg PO BID on day 1, then 800 mg PO BID from day 2 onwards and control groups will receive the same quantity of Placebo. Treatment will be continued till 5 days after for mild groups and 10 days for moderate groups. Eligible patients will be randomly assigned (1:1) to either Favipiravir or Placebo among mild cases; and Favipiravir or Remdesivir among moderate cases. Randomization will be stratified by age group (18 to 40 years, 40 to 60 years and 60 to 80 years) and co-morbidity. The permuted block (30 patients per block) randomization sequence, including stratification, will be prepared by a statistician using STATA-15 software. Eligible patients will be allocat