China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Aid welcomed in Middle East, Europe, Africa
Stores across US run out of stock after Trump calls medicine game changer
The spread of COVID-19 is now posing an especially severe challenge to the Middle East, where chronic wars, sanctions, famine, financial collapse and political unrest have hampered efforts to contain the virus’s spread.
Tens of thousands of novel coronavirus cases have been registered in the region, with Iran alone having more than 35,000 cases. Cases also have been reported in war-torn Syria and Libya, where multitudes of displaced people are acutely vulnerable to diseases.
At such a crucial moment, some Chinese medics are fighting alongside their Middle Eastern counterparts, and Chinese expertise and supplies have been warmly welcomed as the region fights the pandemic.
In Baghdad, capital of war-torn Iraq, a new polymerase chain reaction laboratory is ready to be put into use. The laboratory, set up recently with the help of Chinese experts, is expected to greatly improve the country’s capacity to identify cases.
“Testing ability in Iraq is far from enough,” said Yang Honghui, who arrived in Baghdad on March 7 as part of a seven-member Chinese medical team sent by the Red Cross Society of China.
The laboratory, with a Chinese donation of nucleic acid test kits and other supplies and equipment, will be able to conduct about 1,000 tests per day, Yang said.
Asaad Mahdi, deputy directorgeneral of the Iraqi Ministry of Health, said, “This new laboratory will enhance our ability to deal with this pandemic for the residents of
Baghdad, who make up to about 20 percent of Iraq’s population.”
Iran, the worst-hit country in the Middle East, also benefited from the on-site help of experts from the Red Cross Society of China, who arrived in Teheran on Feb 29, 10 days after Iran reported its first confirmed case.
The Chinese medical workers returned to China last week after concluding their mission there.
“During the 27 days in Iran, we could feel the friendship between the two peoples, and our work was widely appreciated,” said team leader Zhou Xiaohang.
Zhou, the head of the Disaster Relief and Health Department of the Shanghai branch of the Red Cross Society of China, said Chinese expertise, including experience in nationwide mobilization, home quarantine, and full screening and testing of suspected cases, as well as centralized treatment of patients, had been applied in Iran.
Chinese medical teams and aid supplies have also been sent to Europe and Africa.
On Saturday, a group of Chinese medical workers from Shandong province arrived in London to assist in the fight against COVID-19.
The 15-member team includes six medical experts specializing in such areas as disease prevention and control, traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine, and psychological counseling.
The team also brought 17.5 metric tons of medical supplies, which will be donated to local hospitals and communities. Team members also will provide health consultation to overseas Chinese, according to Chinese diplomats in the country.
More than 1,000 patients who tested positive for COVID-19 had died in Britain as of Friday afternoon, according to figures released on Saturday by the Department of Health and Social Care. As of Saturday morning, the number of confirmed cases in the country had reached 17,089.
After medical supplies and equipment from China arrived in
Tunisia on Saturday, the country’s presidency said: “China has responded without hesitation to the presidency’s request to protect the medical and paramedical staff, as well as all agents of various other sectors who are standing in the front line of this war that all humanity is fighting.”
Two temporary hospitals have been set up in Iran, said Wu Huanyu, a member of the expert team and a professor at the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “And more mobile hospitals will be built.”
In a videoconference on Thursday, Chinese medical experts spoke to their counterparts in several Middle Eastern countries including Libya, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria about fighting the pandemic.
17.5 metric tons of medical supplies accompanied 15 Chinese medical workers to London on Saturday.
President Donald Trump has touted it as a “game changer” in treating coronavirus patients. New York state has started clinical trials of it. Several countries, including Bahrain, are already using it to battle the virus.
Pharmacists in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago and other cities say the drugs are out of stock following news of it being a potential treatment. It is hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin, and what has sparked the rush for the drugs was a tweet from Trump.
“HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains — Thank you! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents,” he tweeted on March 21.
Within days of Trump expressing his support for the drugs, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his state had received approval by the Food and Drug Administration to carry out experimental trials. “There’s a good basis to believe they could work,” he said.
Pharmacists nationwide have said the drug is out of stock after news of it being a potential treatment spread. Two major pharmaceutical companies — Teva Pharmaceuticals and Mylan Inc — said they would ramp up production of the medicine in case it is found to work.
But scientists, researchers, drug regulatory bodies and epidemiologists — including Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House coronavirus task force — disagree. They have raised a caution flag: They must first undergo rigorous scientific testing before use.
“The information that you’re referring to specifically is anecdotal … It was not done in a controlled clinical trial. So you really can’t make any definitive statement about it,” he said at the White House news conference after Trump mentioned it.
Besides Trump’s tweet, chloroquine also gained a lot of attention after a study of 36 COVID-19 patients published March 17 in France found that most patients taking the drug cleared the coronavirus from their system a lot faster than the control group. Adding Azithromycin into the mix “was significantly more efficient for virus elimination”, the researchers said.
Isaac Bogoch, a University of Toronto infectious disease specialist, told CNBC that many people saw the French study as helpful but that it wasn’t “even close to being conclusive”.
Last week, Nevada banned prescriptions of the drugs for the coronavirus until the results of rigorous clinical trials are known. “We must deal with facts, not fiction,” Nevada’s chief state medical officer, Ishan Azzam, said.
Nevada is one of several states trying to stop the rush for the drugs that they say has depleted supply for people who need them for established uses, including rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
Cuomo also issued an executive order limiting new prescriptions of the anti-malarial drugs to patients with previously approved FDA conditions and to coronavirus patients participating in the New York statesponsored experiments.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chloroquine along with hydrochloroquine are anti-parasite, anti-inflammatory drugs.
Chloroquine is a decadesold drug that was approved by the FDA in 1949 to treat malaria. Its derivative, hydroxy chloroquine, is often used to treat autoimmune disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
But the FDA hasn’t approved them to fight COVID-19, and last week the agency said it is still determining whether they can be used to treat patients with mild to moderate COVID-19.
“Do not take any form of chloroquine unless prescribed to you by a healthcare provider and obtained from legitimate sources,” FDA Commissioner Dr Stephen Hahn has warned.
In Arizona, a man who took chloroquine phosphate believing it would protect him from the coronavirus, died. His wife also took some and is in critical condition, according to NBC News.
The toxic ingredient they consumed wasn’t the medication form of chloroquine, used to treat malaria in humans. Instead, it was an ingredient listed on a parasite treatment for fish.
The man’s wife told NBC News she had watched televised briefings during which Trump talked about the potential benefits of chloroquine.
“I had (the substance) in the house because I used to have Koi fish (ornamental species of fish),” she told the network. “I saw it sitting on the back shelf and thought, ‘Hey, isn’t that the stuff they’re talking about on TV?’”
In China, a report in the Zheijang University journal showed that 30 patients in a study by researchers from the department of infection and immunity at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center who took the drug didn’t battle the coronavirus any better than those who didn’t.
Dr William Haseltine, a former Harvard Medical School professor, told CNN the study from China showed “it’s unlikely that the drug will work”.