Early data from clinical trials conducted in China show that chloroquine phosphate can help treat the new coronavirus disease Covid-19.

After several rounds of screening, thousands of drugs have been selected and chloroquine is an anti-malaria drug, said Sun Yanrong, deputy director of China National Center for Biotechnology Development.

The drug is being tested in more than a dozen hospitals in Beijing, Guangdong province and Hunan Province, Xinhua reported.

Data from drug studies show “certain curative effects “versus” fairly good curative effects”.

According to The Sun, patients treated with chloroquine showed better fever decline, improve CT images of the lungs, and the need for a shorter recovery time compared with the parallel group.

The percentage of patients who tested negative viral nucleic acids with anti-malarial drugs was also higher.

To date, chloroquine in more than 100 test participants showed no significant adverse effects.

According to China Daily, Zhang Xinmin, head of China’s National Center for Biotechnology Development, said that chloroquine is one of three promising drugs for the new coronavirus.

The remaining two drugs are the anti-influenza drug favipiravir and Gilead’s research antiviral candidate remdesivir.

Favipiravir is currently conducting 70 patient trials in Shenzhen City, Guangdong province, while remdesivir is currently being evaluated by more than 10 medical institutions in Wuhan.

The WSJ noted that progress in the Remdesivir trial was slower than expected due to a lack of eligible coronavirus patients. After 10 days, about 200 participants from 700 trials took part in the objectives of the trial.

Credit:https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/coronavirus-covid-19-choroquine-data/