Doctors in Thailand combined the anti-flu drug oseltamivir with lopinavir and ritonavir, anti-virals used to treat HIV to cure a 71-year-old woman of coronavirus over a 48 hour period. Thailand’s Health ministry was awaiting research results to prove the findings. They have also stopped short of calling it a cure but it is a treatment. The person was sick for ten days and recovered and vastly improved after getting the treatment.
Thailand so far has detected 19 confirmed cases of the virus believed to have originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, which is under lockdown.
That is the second-highest number of cases outside of China, with Japan recording 20.
So far, eight patients in Thailand have recovered and returned home, while 11 remain in the hospital.
The drug cocktail could be used on all people who get hospitalized with a severe case of coronavirus.
Companies like Moderna are working on a vaccine against coronavirus. They hope to get a vaccine out for human trials within 80 days.
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I know there are a lot of people on antivirals around the world. But isn’t there a high risk that antivirals get oversubscribed and viruses develop immunity to them like it happens with antibiotics?
If we had drugs that could heal people quickly then how would big pharma and big med continue to make money?
Gilead pays a great percentage of my meds, and because I qualify for an assistance program, which is a program everyone I’ve met with HIV is also on, I actually pay nothing out of pocket… But to stay on that assistance program, just like all assistance programs, if I earn too much money, they’ll take the assistance.
Patent abuse by Gilead is at the heart of that price gouging – nothing else really.Also Gilead withheld newer better drugs because they already had a monopoly on their older one
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/gilead-seeking-patent-extension-hiv-meds-runs-into-pushback-from-patient-advocates
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23048110/
I suggest you buy from out of the USA https://www.industryweek.com/leadership/companies-executives/article/22024670/as-patent-expires-lauraus-labs-is-ready-to-flood-the-us-with-cheap-hiv-drugs
This is a droplet borne disease with a (preliminary) R0 value around 3 in Wuhan before the lockdown.
That means if people share food with chopsticks they’ve had in their mouth, don’t use soap after being on the toilet, don’t respect personal space, live in cramped cities, spit on the streets, have hole-in-the-floor-type toilets without a lid that you can put down while flushing and frequently without a trap that prevents virus-laden particles from comming back up from the sewer system (a big problem with SARS too); on average they infect 3 other people.
There are very easy ways to reduce the R0 value, possibly to below 1. Don’t stand closer than 2 meters. Wash your hands like you’re scrubbing for surgery. Avoid crowds. Move away from people who cough. Don’t touch your face. If you have to cough, cough into your elbow. If you have the symptoms, isolate yourself (first symptoms tend to be fatigue and fever; coryza and other nasal symptoms are rare; diarrhea and vomiting are so). If you have to be near suspected cases (i.e. doctors) PPE is important; in public face masks mostly prevent you from spreading the disease and from touching your face.
We don’t have a clue what R0 might be now that precautions are being taking in Wuhan. It might be below 1. The current rise in confirmed cases is still just measuring the capability of diagnosing people who were infected 1-2 weeks ago, of which there is a huge backlog.
I am HIV positive, and have been for the past 7 years… I take a drug called Odefsey… I used to get horrible sinus infections, but for the past 7 years on antivirals, the intensity, frequency and length of time I suffered from the common cold reduced across the board. I haven’t had a single sinus infection during those 7 years.
Medical researchers need to expand the testing of HIV drugs for other viral infections. Doing so might provide a way for medical science to stop a virus in its tracks, and that will reduce the number of lost man-hours and money due to sick people… But just as important, increasing the number of possible uses for HIV medication will expand the need for production, which will in turn help put downward pressure on prices, and that will help those with HIV, who end up paying over $1,000 per month for their medication.
I take it back. Maybe they can develop a dosage to give it to people in high risk for a long period of time, like in the epicenter, than it can help in preventing the Virus spread.
Like they said, wash hands often and thoroughly…and pass the message for the sake of sharing some hope.
Very good news, but It still doesn’t mean that the virus is going to be less infectious. Odd that it did not come from China where they have been treating 17,000 cases by now.