A proud moment for India: Delhi hospitals to get 10,000 doses of DRDO-developed anti-COVID drug today

NEW DELHI: An oral drug, developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation, for the treatment of moderate to severe coronavirus patients will be released today.

The first batch of 10,000 doses of the 2-deoxy-D-glucose or 2-DG will be distributed to some hospitals in the national capital by Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh today.

“Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh will release the first batch of anti-Covid drug 2DG via video conferencing facility tomorrow at 10.30 AM,” the Defence Minister’s office tweeted.

The drug, developed by DRDO's Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS) in collaboration with Dr Reddy's Laboratories, got approval for the emergency by the Drugs Controller General of India earlier this month.
According to DRDO, the oral drug “can be easily produced and made available in plenty” being a "generic molecule and analogue of glucose".

The drug comes in powder form in sachet, which is taken orally by dissolving it in water. It accumulates in the virus-infected cells and prevents virus growth by stopping viral synthesis and energy production.

2-DG reduces supplemental oxygen dependence

Clinical trial results have shown that the oral drug helps in faster recovery of hospitalised patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence.

"In 2-DG arm, significantly higher proportion of patients improved symptomatically and became free from supplemental oxygen dependence (42% vs 31%) by Day-3 in comparison to SoC, indicating an early relief from oxygen therapy/dependence. The similar trend was observed in patients aged more than 65 years," the DRDO said.
In the ongoing second COVID-19 wave, a large number of patients are facing severe oxygen dependency and need hospitalisation.

A higher proportion of patients treated with 2-DG showed RT-PCR negative conversion in COVID patients. In efficacy trends, the patients treated with 2-DG showed faster symptomatic cure than Standard of Care (SoC) on various endpoints, the DRDO said.