New Delhi: Reliance Industries Ltd. is working on a new Covid-19 drug and cheaper testing kits as the conglomerate owned by Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani builds an armamentarium against the pathogen which has ravaged India in the past year.
India’s most-valuable company is exploring use of a tapeworm drug, Niclosamide, as a cure for Covid-19, according to its annual report. Its diagnostic kits — R-Green and R-Green Pro — have been approved by India’s apex medical research body and it has designed a process to make sanitizers at one-fifth the market cost, Reliance said in the report.
The refining-to-retail group’s efforts come as India emerges the pandemic’s epicenter with the world’s fastest-surging coronavirus outbreak that has sickened 28.44 million so far and killed more than 337,900 people in the Asian nation. Even though the deadly second wave is ebbing, experts have warned against a possible third wave of infections. — Bloomberg