Since the outbreak of COVID-19, people around the globe have been eagerly awaiting a real breakthrough on its treatment. Fortunately, a silver lining seems finally to be showing up.

The virus clearance rate is a well-established golden standard assessing the clinical effectiveness of an antiviral medication. Recently, preliminary results of the "Clinical Study on Favipiravir's Safety and Effectiveness to COVID-19 Patients" led by the Third People's Hospital of Shenzhen were released at a press conference held by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the P.R.C.

In this study, it shows that Favipiravir alleviated the pneumonia symptom of COVID-19 patients with high tolerance and few adverse reactions, potentially through a mechanism that can quickly eliminate the coronaviruses from their bodies.

Another clinical trial led by the Zhongnan Hospital (Wuhan, China), with 120 COVID-19 patients recruited in both experimental group (favipiravir) and control group (abidole), also showed that the effectiveness in experimental group was significantly better than that in the control group, which was 71.43% and 55.86%, respectively. The same significant advantage went to the average antipyretic and cough remission time.

Moreover, Favipiravir comes in a tablet form, making for easier application. Together these studies indicated the clinical efficacy and safety of Favipiravir, bringing hope to countries suffering from the epidemic.