Celltrion’s COVID-19 treatment reduces incidence of severity by 70%

Celltrion Inc. on July 13 said that its COVID-19 treatment Regkirona has proven effective in reducing the incidence of severe cases of the virus by 70% in all patients.

The biopharmaceutical company presented the results of Regkirona’s global phase III clinical trials at the 31st European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) held online July 9-12.

The presentation was based on its 28-day trial on a total of 1,315 mild and moderate COVID-19 cases. Compared to the placebo group, the patients that were treated with Regkirona showed 70% less incidence of severe cases.

Regkirona also decreased the incidence of severe cases among the high-risk group, such as those with underlying conditions, by 72%. The figure was only 54% in phase II trials.

Regkirona also reduced the time to clinical symptom improvement by 4.7 days compared to the placebo group. The figure was 4.9 days among the high-risk group of patients.

“We will accelerate the global approval of Regkirona based on our phase III clinical trial results,” said a Celltrion official.  

Celltrion added that it confirmed the efficacy of Regkirona in treating the beta and gamma variants of COVID-19 in June of this year through animal efficacy tests. The company will conduct more of such tests in July to test Regkirona’s efficacy in treating the delta variant.  

Write to Woo-sub Kim at duter@hankyung.com
Daniel Cho edited this article.