COVID-19: DO WE REALLY HAVE A CURE?

With over 600,000 deaths worldwide, the Coronavirus disease has taken a big hit on the world. It has strained our health care system and halted our lives. We are in desperate need of a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19, and scientists around the world are in a race against time to find a cure.

Corona virus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the newly discovered coronavirus- SARS-CoV2. Many people infected, will experience mild to moderate respiratory illness and may recover without requiring special treatments while some are asymptomatic. Older people and those with underlying medical conditions are most likely to develop a severe form of the disease,, requiring special treatment such as mechanical or assisted breathing. With the rising number of cases and deaths worldwide we undoubtedly need a cure.

In Nigeria at the beginning of this pandemic, there were claims of “cures”, one of which was the lemon, garlic and ginger treatments that circulated on popular social media platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook. These misleading claims were dismissed by medical professionals and Health organizations, and by what we can observe today it is obvious that those “cures” were untrue and delusory.

The 2019 corona virus is relatively new so we have hospitals and researchers all over the world testing different therapies on patients infected with the virus in an effort to find the most effective treatment.  Some drugs have made headway and are currently being studied, one of which is dexamethasone, a common corticosteroid medication that has been used to treat various health conditions, such as autoimmune conditions and allergic reactions.

RECOVERY, a clinical trial in the UK studied dexamethasone and reported that there was a lower mortality rate in COVID-19 patients that got low daily doses of dexamethasone compared to patients that did not receive it. The medication seems most helpful for patients that are on ventilators or need mechanically delivered oxygen but has shown no benefit for patients with mild symptoms.

Remdesivir is an antiviral drug that is currently being studied as a potential treatment for hospitalized patients with COVID-19. It is an investigational drug, which means that it is not approved to treat COVID-19 patients but can be used in emergency cases. Early results of the use of remdesivir were promising but it also had an insignificant effect on some COVID-19 patients so researchers have concluded that remdesivir alone is not likely enough.

While some drugs have shown promise, research is still being carried out on these drugs. However, results of these studies have varied and more studies are needed to ascertain if these drugs are truly efficient and their benefits outweigh their side effects.

One particular drug that sparked controversy is hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) which has been used for decades in the treatment of malaria and autoimmune conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Early studies on HCQ showed that it was useful in treating hospitalized patients with mild case of COVID-19 but those claims were later debunked as more studies showed that it made no difference and also had serious side effects.

On 27th of July 2020, Dr. Stella Immanuel along with other medics from a group called America’s Frontline Doctors released a statement saying hydroxychloroquine is the potential cure for COVID-19 and Americans did not need to die.

“Nobody needs to get sick. This virus has a cure- it is called hydroxychloroquine, I have treated over 350 patients and not had one death” said Dr. Immanuel.

Her claims of zero mortality in all the patients she treated with hydroxychloroquine is implausible. Despite some early studies raising hopes that the drug could be used to cure coronavirus, a subsequent larger scale trial showed it is not effective as a treatment or prophylaxis. The World Health Organization has halted its trials saying it doesn’t reduce death rates in patients with corona virus and has serious side effects, one of which is heart rhythm problems. However, some countries are still carrying out hydroxychloroquine clinical trials and have used it in treatments of COVID-19 patients.

Controversies and rumors have also trailed COVID-19 and its cure, including claims that it has been politicized. There have also been claims that vital information has been withheld from the public to benefit Big Pharma, however most of these claims cannot be proven and will remain conspiracy theories.

Besides the search for a cure, the ultimate breakthrough in this pandemic would be the discovery of a vaccine. A substantial amount of vaccine research and trials are ongoing. Vaccine research by Russia has seem promising  and the Coronavirus vaccine trials by the University of Oxford also seem hugely promising which is a big WIN in the fight against the virus, but it is still too soon to know if this is enough to offer protection even as larger trials are underway.

Currently there is still no specific cure for coronavirus disease and many possible treatments/drugs are still undergoing trials to ascertain if they are indeed effective against COVID-19. So until we find a cure or get the approved vaccine, we have to learn to live effectively in the “new normal”, we should continue using our face masks, practice social distancing and wash/sanitize our hands and surfaces. Together we can scale through this.

Written by Ayotola Akin-Adewale, 300l AMSA Editor

References

https://www.goodrx.com/blog/coronavirus-medicine-chloroquine-hydroxychloroquine-as-covid19-treatment/

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52354520

https://healthwise.punchng.com/hydroxychloroquine-use-limited-to-clinical-trials-in-nigeria-ncdc/