Malaria medicine 'Hydroxychloroquine' is being administered to 1,100 coronavirus patients in New York, President Donald Trump has said, exuding confidence that the drug, touted as a "game-changer" by him, might give some incredible results in the fight against the disease that has infected over 140,000 people in the country.
An inexpensive drug widely used since 1955 to treat malaria, Hydroxychloroquine is considered to have relatively harmless side effects. It is being tested out on the COVID-19 patients in New York on an experimental basis, hoping that this will give a solution in the treatment against the novel coronavirus.
"Hydroxychloroquine is being administered to 1,100 patients, people in New York along with the Z-pack, which is azithromycin, and it is very early yet. It started two days ago, but we will see what happens,' Trump told reporters at a White House news conference. Last week, Trump said that the drug could be a "gift from God."
"Hydroxychloroquine & Azithromycin, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine, he tweeted Saturday. Trump thanked Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Director Stephen Hawn for fast approval of this drug in the treatment of the COVID-19.
"Let's see how it may work or may not, but we may have some incredible results. We are going to know soon, so it is being tested on 1,100 people in New York, he said.
Meanwhile, Scientists from the University of Oxford have opened up their COVID-19 vaccines for clinical trial recruitments as part of a “rapid vaccine response” to the coronavirus pandemic.The trial, a collaboration between the university's Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group clinical teams, will recruit up to 510 volunteers, who will receive either the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine or a control injection for comparison.
The researchers, working in an “unprecedented” vaccine development effort to prevent COVID-19, said they have started screening healthy volunteers (aged 18-55) from Friday for their upcoming trial in the Thames Valley Region of England.
“The Oxford team had exceptional experience of a rapid vaccine response, such as to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014. This is an even greater challenge,” said Professor Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford.“Vaccines are being designed from scratch and progressed at an unprecedented rate. The upcoming trial will be critical for assessing the feasibility of vaccination against COVID-19 and could lead to early deployment,” he said.
The vaccine based on an adenovirus vaccine vector and the SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 spike protein is already in production but won't be ready for some weeks.