New Delhi: Drug firm Glenmark Pharmaceuticals said Monday it has cut price of antiviral drug ‘Favipiravir’. The drug is sold under the brand name ‘FabiFlu’ for the treatment of patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 infection. The price of ‘Favipiravir’ has been reduced by 27 per cent to Rs 75 per tablet. Glenmark Pharmaceuticals had launched the drug last month at a price of Rs 103 per tablet.
“The price reduction has been made possible through benefits gained from higher yields and better scale. Both the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and formulations are made at Glenmark’s facilities in India. Hence the benefits are being passed on to patients in India,” the company’s regulatory filing said.
The API is manufactured at the company’s Ankleshwar plant. The formulation is being done at Glenmark’s Baddi plant in Himachal Pradesh.
“Our internal research shows us that we launched FabiFlu in India at the lowest market cost. This is in comparison to the cost of ‘Favipiravir’ in other countries where it is approved. And now we hope that this further price reduction will be helpful. It will make the drug even more accessible for patients across the country,” Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Senior VP and Head – India business Alok Malik said.
The company also said it has commenced a post marketing surveillance (PMS) study on ‘FabiFlu’. This is being done to monitor the efficacy and safety of the drug in 1,000 patients. They are prescribed with the oral antiviral, as part of an open label, multicenter, single arm study, the filing said.
“We expect this post marketing surveillance study to shed more light on the drug’s clinical effectiveness. Also we want to test the safety of the prescribed ‘FabiFlu’ drug” Malik said.
Glenmark announced June 20 that it had received the manufacturing and marketing approval from India’s drug regulator for ‘FabiFlu’. So it became the first oral Favipiravir-approved medication in India for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19.
The company has also completed the phase 3 clinical trial with Favipiravir (FabiFlu) in mild to moderate COVID-19 patients in India.
