By Health In Five Writer
The coronavirus cases in India are rising rapidly with the official number already past the 45 lakh mark. However, new Covid-19 cases in China seem to be on the decline – only 308 cases of asymptomatic infection are under observation currently.
It is believed out of the various reasons for this, the biggest role has been played by traditional Chinese medicine.
J Hareendran Nair, Managing Director of the Thiruvananthapuram-based Pankajakasthuri Herbals India, is hopeful that the Ministry of AYUSH at the Centre would grant approval to its ZingiVir-H, a herbo-mineral drug made of a blend of seven ingredients as a cost-effective and scalable solution locally.
Pankajakasthuri has already claimed ‘significant success’ in its efforts to find a treatment for Covid-19 with completion of clinical trials for ZingiVir-H as an add-on therapy. These trials were conducted on 116 infected patients at medical colleges across the country, with 58 being administered the drug and the rest given a placebo (a substance with no therapeutic effect, but used as a control in testing new drugs).
They revealed of that all 58 had recovered and reported a negative Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) results in five days on an average, while others took up to eight days. Hareendran Nair told Hindu BusinessLine that a double-blind, placebo-controlled and multi-centre trial is still going on.
“We hope to complete the trials by mid-September and go to the AYUSH again by the month end. Our request pertains essentially to re-purposing an existing licensed medicine for treating viral fever and acute viral bronchitis indications,” Hareendran Nair was quoted as saying by Hindu Business Line.
The company has learnt that the Department of AYUSH, Kerala, has forwarded it to the Ministry of AYUSH at the Centre. “Once we get the approval from the Centre, we hope to move the drug to outlets across the country within a maximum 15 days,” Nair added.
Until this pandemic struck, it was the prerogative of the State government to act on the drug, based on which Pankajakasthuri had submitted an application it to the Government of Kerala. But on July 28, the Central Ministry ordered that any application on a Covid-19 drug from Ayurvedic manufacturers should be forwarded to it for approval.
Referring to the controversy over Indian Medical Association protesting Kerala’s endorsement of homoeopathy drug as a preventive medicine, Nair said it is most unfortunate.
Citing the Chinese precedent, he said that ‘we have every reason to promote Ayurverda, which is our own system of medicine.’
“It is not fair for me to claim 100 per cent success but ZingiVir-H has been founded to be surprisingly effective and safe,” he said.
