Global experts study coronavirus drugs
GENEVA — The World Health Organization convened outside experts Tuesday to try to speed the development of tests, treatments and vaccines against the new coronavirus, as doctors on the front lines experiment on patients with various drugs in hopes of saving lives in the meantime.
The 400 scientists participating in the two-day meeting — many remotely — will try to determine which approaches seem promising enough to advance to the next step: studies in people to prove if they really work.
“We prioritize what is really urgent, what we absolutely need to know to fight the outbreak, to develop drugs, vaccines,” said Marie-Paule Kieny, co-chair of the meeting and a viral-disease specialist at the French research institution INSERM. That will allow science to “focus on what is the most pressing issue and not to disperse too much the efforts.”
Also on the agenda: Is it possible to build a standing supply of drugs similar to the vaccine stockpiles that exist for diseases such as yellow fever and Ebola?
“If any of these drugs does show an effect, there will be massive demand,” Dr. Graham Cooke, a professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London, said earlier this week.
There are no proven treatments or vaccines for the new and still mysterious virus, which has infected more than 44,000 people worldwide and killed more than 1,100, with the overwhelming majority of cases in China. And while several labs have come up with tests for the virus, there is no quick means of diagnosis, and results take time.
“It’s hard to believe that just two months ago, this virus — which has come to captivate the attention of media, financial markets and political leaders — was completely unknown to us,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the start of the meeting.
Cities in China around the epicenter of the outbreak — with some 60 million people — remain largely closed down to prevent the spread of the disease.
China’s official media reported Tuesday that the top health officials in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, have been relieved of their duties. No reasons were given, although the province’s initial response was deemed slow and ineffective.
In the United States, a group of 195 evacuees were cleared Tuesday to end a two-week quarantine at a Southern California military base where they’d been staying since flying out of China.
After everyone at March Air Reserve Base passed their final health screenings, they threw their face masks into the air and hugged, said Dr. Nancy Knight of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“These individuals have completed their quarantine. They pose no health risk to themselves, to their families, to their places of work, to schools or their communities,” she said of the group, which arrived Jan. 29 from Wuhan.
“They have been watched more closely than anyone else in the United States.”
And at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, Calif., a labeling error caused a person infected with the novel coronavirus to be mistakenly released from a hospital and then returned, officials said Tuesday. More than 200 evacuees from China are living there under federal quarantine.
UC-San Diego Medical Center officials said Tuesday that it used pseudonyms on labels to protect patient privacy and that the CDC “used different naming protocols that were not shared with our institution.”
“We have since worked closely with the CDC to protect patient privacy while ensuring that labeling matches at all facilities,” the hospital said in a statement.
It said the patient in isolation was doing well with minimal symptoms.
There have been 13 confirmed cases in the United States, including seven in California.
Experts say it could be months or even years before any approved treatments or vaccines are developed, by which time the outbreak might be over. But they say they at least will have more weapons at their disposal if the virus strikes again.
The flu-like disease, officially named COVID-19 on Tuesday, has ranged from mild to serious and can cause pneumonia.
Doctors give patients fluids and pain relievers to try to ease the symptoms, which can include fever, cough and shortness of breath.
In the case of those who are severely ill, doctors use ventilators to help them breathe or a machine that pumps and oxygenates their blood outside the body, easing the burden on the heart and lungs.
Beyond those standard treatments, doctors are looking at using drugs that already have been approved to fight other viruses, or experimental medications.
At least two studies in patients are already underway in China: one of a combination HIV drug containing lopinavir and ritonavir, sold in the U.S. as Kaletra, the other of an experimental drug named remdesivir, made by Gilead Sciences.
In a draft research plan published last month, WHO said remdesivir was considered “the most promising candidate.” It was used briefly in some Ebola patients in Congo before that study stopped. But the WHO cited laboratory studies that suggested it might be able to target SARS and MERS, cousins to the new virus.
The U.N. health agency said there still were many critical unanswered questions about the virus, including what animals it came from and how exactly it’s transmitted between people. It’s thought to spread through droplets in the air when an infected person sneezes or coughs.
“To defeat this outbreak, we need answers to all those questions and more,” Tedros said.