After months of research and lingering controversies, emerging evidence shows that the anti-malaria drug, Chloroquine can kill Coronavirus at the early stage of the infection.
Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye made the revelation, Tuesday.
Her disclosure follows back-and-forth global debate-turns-controversy on the effectiveness of the drug in combating the lethal virus.
Recall a Nigerian-trained, American physician, Dr. Stella Immanuel recently claimed she has successfully treated Covid-19 patients with the drug combo. Following her claim, Dr. Immanuel had alleged that there have attempts by medical boards in the U.S and the BigTech to shut her down for making the claim.
The videos where she made the blockbuster claim back in July, were quickly yanked off the social media, few hours after they hit the news. The platforms cited ‘misinformation,’ as their reason for taken down the viral video that broke the internet.
She was not alone as several medical experts have backed her claim. On the other hand, numerous others had also faulted her claim, including America’s top epidemiologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who said Hydroxychloroquine has proved “ineffective” in treating the viral infection, something that has constantly put him on the path of rage with U.S President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the NAFDAC DG who spoke on Tuesday during a virtual news conference in Abuja, noted that while Chloroquine had proven effective at the early stage of the infection, Remdesivir, made by Gilead Sciences Inc, has also been shown to kill the virus at late stages.
Adeyeye, however, said that the cost for treating people with chloroquine was way cheaper than with Remdesivir. Remdesivir cost $2,500 to treat an average patient and Chloroquine is $10.
She also noted that countries in West Africa like Ghana, Togo, and Senegal have also embraced the clinical use of Chloroquine for treatment.
In Adeyeye’s words: “In March 20, this year, just before the lockdown, I had a press briefing. At that time, people did not understand what clinical trial treatment meant. Once they hear treatment, they think you can use it anyhow. But clinical trial treatment is a research study to see whether the drug will work or not.
“In the press briefing, I said I was going through literature to see what others have done and I saw in a particular literature a reliable publication of an article about Chloroquine and Remdesivir (that time nobody was even talking of Remdesivir). This was February of this year.
“They said in the cell culture, Remdesivir and Chloroquine killed COVID-19 viruses, that is, invitro – in the laboratory. But you cannot translate that to humans unless a clinical trial is done.
“I kept looking. About two weeks or so later in early March (this was at a time when COVID-19 was at its peak in China); there was a publication where 100 patients were treated with Chloroquine across ten hospitals in six cities, including Wuhan. It said that all of them recovered from the symptoms. They called it that time pneumonia symptoms.
“In the cells, in the lab, Remdesivir and Chloroquine killed COVID-19. At what stage would they be more effective? We didn’t know at that point. Now, we are realising that Chloroquine is effective at the early stage.”
To corroborate her findings, Adeyeye said while watching the CNN about four or five days ago, she heard for the first time, Sanjay Gupta, an American neurosurgeon, medical reporter, and writer, saying that Chloroquine can be used prophylactically (i.e early on)
The NAFDAC DG noted: “Remember, Remdesivir and Chloroquine work in the cells. Chloroquine was proven to work in 100 patients. We did not know at that time that the disease has about four phases – pre-exposure stage, early stage, mild stage, and the severe stage.
“Now we are talking of Remdesivir. We met with Gilead – the maker of Remdesivir about two months ago and they came. They said they have licensed their drug to five Indian companies and one Pakistani company. To treat an average patient will cost about $10 with Chloroquine and cost about $2,500 with Remdesivir.
“When we now got the profile of Remdesivir, what was recorded in literature and from the manufacturer was that Remdesivir doesn’t work at the early stage. It works at the late stage. But when viruses are in the tube in the laboratory, you won’t know which is late or which is early. Both killed them. We now understand that it is not only one drug that can be effective for COVID-19, but it depends on the stage and the phases of the disease.”
The New Diplomat reports that Chloroquine (also called Hydroxychloroquine) has long been used to treat malaria, as well as other conditions such as lupus and arthritis.
For over a century, it has helped save millions of lives in West Africa and elsewhere on the continent, where malaria parasite has become a phenomenon.
It’s used to reduce fever and inflammation, and the hope has been that it can also inhibit the virus that causes Covid-19.
However, the use and the effectiveness of HCQ to battle Covid-19-contagion continues to spark daily debate around the world, even as the race for a Covid-19 vaccine intensifies among several candidate drugs already at their advanced stage of trials.
