The Ministry of Ayush had asked Patanjali to provide details of the medicine (File)
Yoga teacher Ramdev's Patanjali Ayurved never claimed it can cure COVID-19 with its medicines, Coronil and Swasari, the firm's Chief Executive Officer Acharya Balkrishna said on Tuesday, adding it just shared the favourable outcome of clinical trials on patients. The Centre had barred the firm from advertising the products after Ramdev, in a sensational claim last week, said they cured 280 patients within days in trials.
"We never said the medicine (coronil) can cure or control corona, we said that we had made medicines and used them in clinical controlled trial which cured corona patients. There is no confusion in it," Acharya Balkrishna, CEO Patanjali, was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
The Ministry of Ayush had asked Patanjali to provide details like the composition of the medicines, the results of its research, the hospitals where the research was conducted, whether the company had a clearance from the Institutional Ethics Committee and whether it had registered for the clinical trials.
A licensing officer had later said the company sought a license for an "immunity booster and a cough and fever cure" and it never revealed that the products were part of medicine kits. The state government had sent a notice to the company.
"In reply to our notice, Patanjali said no Corona Kit has been packaged by them. Patanjali has printed a representative picture of coronavirus on Coronil packaging. Samples of Coronil and two other drugs have been taken for testing," YS Rawat, Licence Officer, Uttarakhand Ayurved Department, was quoted as saying by news agency ANI on Tuesday.
Ramdev had said the firm had collaborated with the privately-owned National Institute of Medical Sciences or NIMS University, Jaipur for clinical trials.
"We are launching COVID medicines Coronil and Swasari today. We conducted two trials of these, first clinical controlled study, which took place in Delhi, Ahmedabad, among many other cities. Under this, 280 patients were included and 100 per cent of those recovered. We were able to control Corona and its complications in this. After this the all-important clinical control trial was conducted," he had said.
"With the help of NIMS, Jaipur we conducted the clinical control study on 95 patients. The biggest thing which came out of this is that within three days 69 per cent patients recovered and became negative from positive (cases) and within seven days 100 per cent of them became negative," he added.
The highly communicable disease, which has killed lakhs across the globe, currently has no evidence-based cure. Doctors, however, are using several experimental drugs and procedures which have worked for some patients.
With inputs from ANI