Famotidine has gone out of stock in US as Feinstein indicates it works for covid

NEW DELHI, May 8: Helpless in the absence of a medicine to beat the new viral infection engulfing the world like a firestorm, people are ready to consume anything that the rumour mills are churning out for coronavirus (covid). Even scientists and doctors are trying to repurpose various existing medicines, throwing to the winds even the basic norms and ethics that govern the practice of science and medicine. They were trained in the nursery how not to see anything that is not on the table and not to make guineapigs of innocent human beings. With the result, till the other day it used to take anything around 20 years for a vaccine or drug to be pushed into the market.

Now with the outbreak of the new coronavirus that has made the whole world its killing field, repurposing existing drugs and finding host-based management like vaccines and plasma treatment in month's time is justifiably the order of the day.

In India, lopinavir-ritonavir, hydroxychloroquine, mycobacterium, disulfiram, resveratrol, remdesivir, plasma therapy have reportedly been tried to face the rapidly evolving challenge of a global emergency.

In the US, when the epidemic started sweeping the country by the middle of March, many experts and others suggested all sorts of remedies and drugs. Research was put on fast-forward for virus-targeted as well as host-based solutions. That was when even the President himself batted for hydroxychloroquine and in turn received brickbats from his political enemies that the realtor was canvassing business for a European pharma firm which proved otherwise when he purchased his own prescription drug from India in bulk after cajoling Modi into sharing some stocks.

Then came Gilead's repurposing drug, Remdesivir, which they projected as a breakout success. After much discussion at the White House and FDA approval, now there is a pause! It has started production although it is still described as in experimental stage. Japan has approved the drug with that limitation.

After hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir now comes the news that researchers at Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health, New Hyde Park, New York, are in the final stage of declaring the efficacy of the simple famotidine, administered in intravenous doses to over a 1,000 coronavirus patients in trial since April 7. And the pepcid stocks have now disappeared from pharma shelves!

The hint for the US scientists had come from a reported Chinese finding that some elederly people who were taking routinely famotidine survived the viral attack. It would not occur to the Chinese that the other way round could also have been a possibility.

All said and done, coronavirus is not taking down the global economy, at least for the health sector.