• Scientists around the world are working on potential treatments and vaccines for the new corona-virus disease known as COVID-19.
  • Several companies are working on antiviral drugs, some of which are already in use against other illnesses, to treat people who already have COVID-19.
  • Other companies are working on vaccines that could be used as a preventive measure against the disease.
With confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide surpassing 2.7 million and continuing to grow, scientists are pushing forward with efforts to develop vaccines and treatments to slow the pandemic and lessen the disease’s damage.
Some of the earliest treatments will likely be drugs that are already approved for other conditions, or have been tested on other viruses.
“People are looking into whether existing antivirals might work or whether new drugs could be developed to try to tackle the virus,” Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, a professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy, said in March.
President Trump said he was pushing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to eliminate barriers to get treatments to people with COVID-19.
A few days later, the FDA issued an emergency use declaration for the anti-malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine.
About 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine and 1 million doses of chloroquine were donated to the nation’s Strategic National Stockpile.
The medications can be distributed and prescribed by doctors for adults and teens hospitalized with COVID-19 when a clinical trial isn’t available.
However, the following week, officials from the European Union said there’s no evidence that hydroxychloroquine was effective in treating COVID-19.
The use of these medications was also questioned in an opinion pieceTrusted Source in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
The authors raised questions about recent studies done on the anti-malaria drugs and whether there’s been a “rush to judgement” on getting them through the approval pipeline.
In late April, the FDA issued a warningTrusted Source against the use of both hydroxychloroquine and chloro-quine outside of medical facilities. The agency stated there were “serious and potentially life-threatening heart rhythm problems” connected with the drugs.
In addition, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reportedTrusted Source on the same day that a clinical study on chloro quine had been ended because some participants had developed irregular heartbeats, and nearly two dozen had died after taking daily doses of the medication.
In early May, researchers reported that hydroxychloroquine had not been beneficial to participants in another clinical study. They said the medication didn’t harm the participants who took it, but the drug also didn’t lessen their need for ventilators nor did it reduce their risk of death.
Indeed, don’t expect these drugs or other medications to be available at your pharmacy anytime soon.
FDA officials have stated it could still be a year before any drugs are available to the general public for COVID-19 treatment, because the agency needs to make sure the medications are safe for this particular use and what the proper dosage should be.
Indeed, there’s only so much that vaccine and drug development can be sped up, even with improvements in genetic sequencing and other technologies.
“Even though technological advances allow us to do certain things more quickly,” Lee told Healthline, “we still have to rely on social distancing, contact tracing, self-isolation, and other measures.”
Here’s a rundown of the latest COVID-19 vaccine and drug developments.