The US kicks off an experimental COVID-19 treatment

Patients with coronavirus will be treated with long-known and affordable antiviral drugs. According to what Donald Trump announced on March, 19, Hydroxychloroquine (plaquenil) will be used as an experiment for COVID-19 treatment in the US.

He said, that Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria and arthritis and it’s a very strong medicine. The drug showed very encouraging results and they intend to make the drug available as soon as possible.

Trump also added, that the main plus about this drug is that it doesn’t require being licensed as it already has market access. He went on to state, that there’s another drug, Remdesivir(a novel antiviral drug in the class of nucleotide analogs) that has shown very good results in the fight against this virus. This medicine is about to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration(FDA).

This decision has been made because it will take a long time to develop a vaccine against coronavirus.

“So we have lifted bureaucratic hurdles to develop vaccines and therapies as fast as possible, much sooner than anyone ever thought to do so. As you know, earlier this week we’ve started the first clinical trials of the vaccine against the virus, it began in a record time, within a few weeks,“ mentioned the American president.

According to him, several drugs are in development.

FDA Commissioner Stephen Khan, speaking after Trump’s statement, said the medicine against malaria would be tested to treat COVID-19 in a very large clinical trial. At the same time, Khan added, that an authentic vaccine against the coronavirus will be ready no earlier than a year from now.

To recap: on March 17, 2020, the first four volunteers were vaccinated for COVID-19 in the US, and 45 more are to participate with the experiment to last more than a year from now.

According to the latest data, 10,259 cases of coronavirus were registered in the United States, 152 people died.