SEOUL, Aug. 4 (UPI) -- A group of scientists, primarily from South Korean universities, has confirmed the efficacy of an oral anti-viral treatment, called CP-COV03 or Xafty, against COVID-19 after a clinical trial.
If a later-stage trial is successful and the medication is approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, the drug could be available next year.
Developed by Korea's biotech company Hyundai Bioscience, the drug was found to address major COVID-19 symptoms listed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, including cough, headache, sore throat, nausea and chills.
The findings were published in the latest edition of the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications.
"We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial with 300 patients to learn that CP-COV03 was effective in improving COVID-19 symptoms for more than 48 hours, with no serious adverse events," Dankook University professor Choy Jin-ho told UPI. He is one of the paper's corresponding co-authors.
