Amid the ongoing pandemic, the government is considering the involvement of three or four more firms to ramp up the production of the drug 2DG, developed by the DRDO for the treatment of COVID-19 patients and do away with its scarcity.
"After the launch of the medicine on Monday, the demand for the drug is very high as a lot of patients and their relatives are sharing positive experiences," government sources said.
However, due to the limited production capacity, many patients have not been able to get the medicine despite a prescription from doctors, they said.
In view of the situation, we are considering allowing 3-4 more firms to produce the drug using the DRDO patent for the drug, the sources said.
In the first batch, manufacturers had supplied only 10,000 sachets and the supply is likely to improve only around mid-June.
From the first batch of the medicine, satchets were distributed to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and the Director-General of the Armed Forces Medical Services while some were kept as reserve.
2-DG has been developed by DRDO's Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), in collaboration with Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Hyderabad. Clinical trial results have shown that this molecule helps in the faster recovery of hospitalized patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence.
A higher proportion of patients treated with 2-DG have shown RT-PCR negative conversion in COVID patients. The drug will be of immense benefit to the people suffering from COVID in the ongoing pandemic.
( With inputs from ANI )
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