This Japanese pill could kill the flu in a day, but there’s a problem
Feb 19, 2018, 4:10 AM | Updated: 7:25 pm
Henry Beverly, 73, battles the flu while tended to by nurse Kathleen Burks at Upson Regional Medical Center in Thomaston, Ga., Friday, Feb. 9, 2018. "I believe if I stand up right now I'd just collapse," said Beverly after days of battling the flu. Beverly came to the emergency room earlier in the week and was scheduled to go home after being treated before his symptoms took a quick turn for the worse. "I felt like my body was just going to blow up. A lot of people don't realize what the flu really is. It takes a lot to put me on my feet. I believe I would have died if I went home." (AP Photo/David Goldman)
(AP Photo/David Goldman)
A Japanese drug maker might have created a pill that could cure the flu in a single dose.
The drug maker Shionogi said that its new flu treatment succeeds in 24 hours, at least according to a late-stage trial it conducted on American and Japanese patients, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The cure works faster than any other medication and only needs a single dosage.
According to USA Today, Tamiflu, a popular anti-flu drug, requires two doses a day for five days — three times longer to kill the flu virus.
The Swiss company Roche, which created the flu treatment Tamiflu, helped to develop the Japanese drug, too
However, this potential flu killer wouldn’t be available at U.S. stores until at earliest 2019.
This year’s flu season has been particularly troubling for Americans, with numbers surging to levels comparable to the swine flu pandemic that ravaged the U.S. in 2009, according to The Washington Post.
Anne Schuchat, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Post that she is awaiting more information about the level of people affected.
Related: Hundreds of Arizonans killed by flu this season, new strain emerging
“This does not mean we’re having a pandemic,” Schuchat said. “But it is a signal of how very intense the flu season has been. We may be on track to break some recent records.”
According to Fortune, more than 4,000 Americans died from pneumonia or influenza so far this year. That number will likely rise as more data becomes available.
“It gets worse. The death toll in future weeks is expected to grow even higher because flu activity is still rising — and the number of deaths follow the flu activity,” Fortune reported.
In fact, Schuchat from the CDC told Fortune that the recent rise in flu activity will lead to more hospitalizations and deaths.
And, she said, the flu season may not end for months.
“We have a lot to learn still about influenza,” she said, according to Fortune. “It’s a wake-up call about how severe influenza can be, and why we can never let down our guard.”
