Clinical trials are being conducted to identify effective drugs to treat the new coronavirus. Credit: Arek Socha from Pixabay.

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Early data from clinical trials being performed in China has revealed that chloroquine phosphate could help treat the new coronavirus disease, Covid-19.

China National Center for Biotechnology Development deputy head Sun Yanrong said that chloroquine, an anti-malarial medication, was selected after several screening rounds of thousands of existing drugs.

Xinhua reported that the drug is undergoing clinical trials in more than ten hospitals in Beijing, Guangdong province, and Hunan province.

Chloroquine data from Covid-19 trials

Data from the drug’s studies showed ‘certain curative effect’ with ‘fairly good efficacy’.

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According to Sun, patients treated with chloroquine demonstrated a better drop in fever, improvement of lung CT images, and required a shorter time to recover compared to parallel groups.

The percentage of patients with negative viral nucleic acid tests was also higher with the anti-malarial drug.

Chloroquine has so far showed no obvious serious adverse reactions in the more than 100 participants in the trials.

The China National Center for Biotechnology Development head Zhang Xinmin said that chloroquine is one of the three drugs that have a promising profile against the new coronavirus, reported China Daily.

The remaining two drugs are anti-flu medicine favipiravir and Gilead’s investigational anti-viral candidate remdesivir.

Favipiravir is currently in a 70-patient trial in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, while remdesivir is under evaluation at more than ten medical institutions in Wuhan.

WSJ noted that remdesivir’s trials are progressing slower than expected due to the lack of eligible coronavirus patients. Around 200 of the trial’s target of 700 participants have been enrolled after ten days.

Japan to trial HIV medication

Japan chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga has announced plans to conduct clinical trials of an existing HIV medication for the treatment of Covid-19.

Suga was quoted by Reuters as saying: “We’re currently preparing to start clinical trials using HIV medication on the novel coronavirus.”

The chief cabinet secretary did not comment on the time period required for the drug’s approval. Similar studies are already underway in China.