Effectiveness of Early Favipiravir Therapy in Hospitalised COVID-19 Patients
Abdulrahman Tawfik, Abdulrahman Alzahrani, Sami Alharbi, Jamal Almitairi, Arwa Alzahrani, Mohammed Ali Alshehri, Mohammed S Aldughaim, Hani Alothaid
Advances in Virology, doi:10.1155/2022/9240941
COVID-19 is a disease caused by a novel coronavirus with no speci c, standard treatment. We investigated the clinical data of COVID-19 patients admitted to King Fahad Specialist Hospital (KFSH) in Buraydah by comparing the patients who were treated early with favipiravir (within 3 days of admission) to patients who were treated after three days of admission or not treated. 165 patients were con rmed with PCR tests and admitted to KFSH for treatment. Comorbidities contributed signi cantly to increasing the length of stay in hospital at 11.4 ± 0.8 days compared to patients with no comorbidities at 8.6 ± 0.9 days (p 0.041). A total of 103 patients were treated with favipiravir, and we found that early treatment with favipiravir (within 3 days) reduced the length of stay in hospital signi cantly (8.8 ± 1.4 days) compared to patients who were treated after 3 days (13.3 ± 4.6 days) (p 0.0015). Moreover, patients with comorbidities in both early and late treatment groups had signi cantly higher average lengths of stay in hospital (11.2 ± 0.9 days) compared to patients with no comorbidities (7.9 ± 0.7 days) (p 0.017). Interestingly, patients treated early with favipiravir (with comorbidities and without) stayed fewer days in hospital compared to those with late treatment (p 0.021; a di erence of 4.5 ± 1.9 days; and p 0.018; a di erence of 4.2 ± 1.7 days, respectively). In conclusion, our analysis indicates that early treatment with favipiravir can reduce the length of stay in hospital and improve clinical manifestations of COVID-19 patients.
Disclosure Abdulrahman Tawfik and Abdulrahman Alzahrani are cofirst authors.
Conflicts of Interest e authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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