Scientists around the world are running clinical trials on more than 100 drugs as they seek a treatment or cure for the coronavirus.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said that a vaccine for the virus is at least a year away. Any one of the drugs currently being tested could help rehabilitate patients that are hospitalized with COVID-19, according to Axios.
President Trump has touted a handful of the proposed treatments, such as remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine, and ordered the Food and Drug Administration to fast-track the drugs’ applications for clinical trials.
Remdesivir is the furthest along in research and is being studied in six clinical trials around the world. More data on the drug’s capacity to combat the coronavirus is expected to come out next month.
Hydroxychloroquine is a drug that was used to treat malaria in the 1950s. Scientists in southern France used the drug along with the antibiotic azithromycin to treat six coronavirus patients who fully recovered within a week.
“Despite its small sample size our survey shows that hydroxychloroquine treatment is significantly associated with viral load reduction/disappearance in COVID-19 patients and its effect is reinforced by azithromycin,” the study on hydroxychloroquine said.
Fauci has warned against trusting such anecdotal evidence of cures for the coronavirus until more research has been done.
