I’ve said from the start that anti-virals were always going to be more useful to us this year than vaccines, which take so long to test and be ready for use. What we really need are anti-virals which also happen to be preapproved and tested and hopefully in mass production. Chloroquine is cheap too, though I doubt Australian stocks of the drug are very high, or that our genius rulers have arranged more. This may be a godsend in Africa where chloroquine use is already high and may reduce the spread of Covid-19 somewhat.
The UK banned export of chloroquine a few weeks ago. Clearly someone there thought it might be useful.
Wang et al reported on Feb 4th that Chloroquine (anti-Malarial) and Remdesivir (anti HIV) may be useful against Coronavirus. They used lab experiments on cells in glass, which had promise. But “in vitro” doesn’t always mean “in vivo”. So I’ve been waiting for some results on people. Early reports were ambiguous. Recently this was hyped as an “Australian cure” which really just meant the start of a proper trial.
There are links to papers and discussion below but I can’t beat this great description explaining how inside the [...]