The race is on in the drug battle against the coronavirus

Researchers are looking to repurpose existing pharmaceuticals to target a disease that has already killed thousands around the world

Some have potential in helping those at greatest risk, virologist says

Reading Time:3 minutes

Various medications are being tested to treat Covid-19. Photo: Alamy

Published: 8:00am, 24 Mar 2020Updated: 12:41pm, 24 Mar 2020

Developing a new drug usually takes years, but scientists are racing against that clock to repurpose existing medications or preapproved substances to try to quickly manufacture an antiviral drug to battle Covid-19.

As the pandemic hit more countries around the world and death tolls rose, the World Health Organisation identified four medications last week and started a global trial, calling it Solidarity. Two of them are drug cocktails.

They include remdesivir, a preapproved drug originally designed for treating Ebola; a combination of two HIV drugs, lopinavir and ritonavir; another cocktail of lopinavir and ritonavir plus interferon beta; and the antimalaria drug chloroquine.

So far no available antiviral drug has been able to target Covid-19.

Remdesivir by Gilead Sciences has been touted as a relatively promising candidate and five large clinical trials are under way. The results of two of them will be available in early April.

Remdesivir was first made available for “compassionate use” for seriously ill patients in mainland China as early as February and later in other countries. The demand for compassionate use was so high that the maker said over the weekend that it would temporarily suspend granting access to new patients.

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