Chinese Medical Experts Confirms Chloroquine As First Anti-Viral Drug Against Coronavirus

Published: February 20, 2020

Chinese medical experts have confirmed Chloroquine Phosphate as the first anti-viral drug against novel coronavirus Covid-19.

Sun Yanrong, the deputy head of the China National Center for Biotechnology Development under the Ministry of Science and Technology, made this known during a press conference on Monday, February 17, 2020.

Based on the result of clinical trials, Chloroquine Phosphate, a well known antimalarial drug, has been confirmed to have certain curative effect on coronavirus disease, the Chinese official said.

The medical experts have “unanimously” suggested that the drug be included in the next version of the treatment guidelines and applied in wider clinical trials as soon as possible.

Chloroquine Phosphate, which has been used for more than 70 years to treat malaria, was selected from tens of thousands of existing drugs after multiple rounds of screening, Sun said.

According to her, the drug has been under clinical trials in over 10 hospitals in Beijing, as well as in south China’s Guangdong Province and central China’s Hunan Province, and has shown fairly good efficacy.

In the trials, the groups of patients that have taken the drug have shown better indicators than their parallel groups, in abatement of fever, improvement of CT images of lungs, the percentage of patients who became negative in viral nucleic acid tests and the time they need to do so, she said.

Patients taking the drug also take shorter time to recover, she added.

Sun gave an example of a 54-year-old patient in Beijing, who was admitted to hospital four days after showing symptoms. After taking the drug for a week, he saw all indicators improve and the nucleic acid turn negative.

So far, no obvious serious adverse reactions related to the drug have been found among the over 100 patients enrolled in the clinical trials, she said.

Meanwhile, KanyiDaily recalls that the Federal Government had announced a N36million cash prize for any Nigerian that finds cure for coronavirus and Lassa fever.

According to FG, the N36 million reward was to encourage Nigerian scientists to venture into finding lasting solutions to human challenges to prove to the world that Nigeria has the capacity to address human problems not only at local scale but at global level.