Favipiravir versus Arbidol for COVID-19: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Chang Chen; Jianying Huang; Zhenshun Cheng; Jianyuan Wu; Song Chen; Yongxi Zhang; Bo Chen; Mengxin Lu; Yongwen Luo; Jingyi Zhang; Ping Yin; Xinghuan Wang

With a limited knowledge of the efficacy for Arbidol, we assumed a 50% clinical recovery rate at Day 7 for the Arbidol group. A superior clinically efficacy of Favipiravir was then expected to be at least 70%. With Bilateral 95% CI of the difference between the clinical recovery rate of the experimental group and the control group was calculated. If the lower limit was larger than 0, it was considered the experimental group is superior to the control group. Log rank test was used to compare the recovery latency between the two groups. For secondary outcomes, student's T-test or Wilcoxon rank sum test (if T-test was not applicable) was performed for safety indicators and continuous variables, Wilcoxon rank sum test was used for grade variables. Frequency or composition (%) were used for statistical description of categorial variables, and Chi-square test or Fisher's exact test was used for comparison between groups. For all statistical tests, P<0.05 (bilateral) were considered as statistically significant.