Favipiravir versus standard of care in patients with severe COVID-19 infections: A retrospective comparative study

Objective: To assess the efficacy of Favipiravir compared to the standard therapy in treating patients with severe COVID-19 infection. Methods: This is a retrospective cohort of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia who were treated with favipiravir, versus comparison group that received the standard of care. Results: A total of 226 patients were included; 110 patients received favipiravir and 116 patients received standard of care. Patients who received favipiravir had longer time to recovery (14.2 +/- 8.8 versus 12.8 +/- 5.2, p = 0.17). Favipiravir was associated with an improved early day 14 mortality (4 [3.6%] versus 11 [9.5%]), p = 0.008), but was associated with a higher day 28 mortality (26 [23.6%] versus 11 [9.5%], p = 0.02). The overall mortality was higher in the favipiravir versus the standard of care group but difference was not statistically significant (33 [30.0%] versus 24 [20.7%], p = 0.10). Conclusion: The addition of favipiravir to standard of care was not associated with any improvement in clinical outcomes or mortality. Larger randomized controlled clinical trials are needed to further assess the efficacy of favipiravir. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

The study found that treating COVID-19 patients with Favipiravir did not lead to improvements in clinical outcomes or mortality. While early day 14 mortality was slightly reduced, day 28 mortality increased, and overall mortality was slightly higher in the Favipiravir group compared to the standard of care, although the difference was not statistically significant.