An image of medicine named Omecron 20 and Omecron 40 has gone viral on social media claiming that the medicine for treating Omicron variant has been available in the market for a long time.
A social media user shared the image of the medicine with a caption that reads, “Omicron is coming.” The caption hints that people were already aware of the new variant of the virus and its medicine was available for a long time.
The link to the post can be seen here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile did a fact-check and found the claim to be fake.
On closely observing the viral image, we found Nipro was mentioned on the bottom left corner of the medicine strip.
Taking a cue we searched for ‘Omecron 20, Nipro’ and found that NIPRO pharma had a description of the medicine on its official website.
According to the description, Omecron 20 and 40 has the composition of Omeprazole. The description read, “Omecron (Omeprazole), a substituted benzimidazole, is an inhibitor of gastric acid secretion. It inhibits gastric acid secretion by blocking hydrogen-potassium-adenosine triphosphatase (H+/K+ ATPase) enzyme system in the gastric parietal cell. After oral administration, the onset of the antisecretory effect occurs within one hour, with the maximum effect occurring within two hours and inhibition of secretion lasts up to 72 hours. When the drug is discontinued, secretory activity returns gradually, over 3 to 5 days.” Nipro Pharma is a pharmaceutical company based in Bangladesh in collaboration with a Japanese MNC, NIPRO Corporation.
Further, we found that according to the National Library of Medicine, Omeprazole is used alone or with other medications to treat the symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease.
We found that Omecron is a medicine marketed by Nipro Pharma and is used for treating gastric irritation. Thus the viral post claiming Omecron to be medicine for the Omicron variant is false.
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