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TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan will accelerate a review of Gilead Sciences Inc’s antiviral drug remdesivir so that it can be approved for domestic patients of COVID-19 one week after the US firm’s submission for such approval, the minister of health said on Saturday. Health.
The comment by Health Minister Katsunobu Kato comes after remdesivir received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for COVID-19 on Friday.
“I heard that Gilead Sciences will request approval (in Japan) in a few days,” Kato told reporters. “I issued an instruction so that we can be ready to pass it in a week or so.”
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Friday he was inclined to extend Japan’s state of emergency, which expires on May 6, for a month, as experts said coronavirus restrictions should remain in effect until the number of cases drop even more.
Japan has confirmed nearly 15,000 cases and 517 deaths from COVID-19, according to an NHK count.
The capital Tokyo experienced a decline in reported cases daily since peaking at 201 on April 17, with further double-digit falls this week, but the numbers rose much more than 100 on Friday and Saturday.
The Nikkei business daily has said that while Gilead planned to distribute enough doses to cover 140,000 patients worldwide, Japan would not receive enough for all of its needy patients.
No one was immediately available for comment on Gilead’s Japanese unit.
Remdesivir, which previously failed as a treatment for Ebola, is being tested against COVID-19 because it is designed to turn off the mechanism by which certain viruses, including the coronavirus, make copies of themselves and potentially overwhelm their host’s immune system.
(Report by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Nick Macfie Edition)
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