France to propose treatment of coronavirus

A renowned research professor in France has reported successful results from a new treatment for Covid-19, with early tests suggesting it can stop the virus from being contagious in just six days.

Didier Raoult, director of a university hospital institute in  Marseille, explained that he had conducted a clinical trial in which he treated 25 Covid-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine. After six days, he said, only 25 percent of patients who took this drug still had the virus in their body.

By contrast, 90 percent of those who had not taken hydroxychloroquine continued to carry the Covid-19.

Professor Raoult is an infectious diseases specialist and head of the IHU Méditerranée Infection, who has been tasked by - and consulted by - the French government to research possible treatments of Covid-19.

In the wake of this announcement, French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi offered to donate millions of Plaquenil (a trade name for hydroxychloroquine) to continue the tests, while the French government’s spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye hailed the “promising results” and promised to expand clinical trials for this treatment.

Seeing as it has been available and used for decades, hydroxychloroquine is “very well known, inexpensive and can be rapidly produced in large quantities”, D’Alessandro added. In light of these qualities, 25 clinical trials have been conducted or are underway in China to see whether or not this treatment should be used to treat Covid-19 patients. That’s while research was carried out into hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness against SARS, MERS and Zika when these diseases first flared.

However, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, which is piloting the European clinical trial programme, has said that if there is additional proof in human patients of hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness, it could be added to the list of drugs used in Europe’s large-scale clinical trials.