What can the NHS do to help victims of coronavirus as the UK goes in to so-called lockdown?
Indeed what can the rest of the world do to help people while scientists try to come up with a vaccine?
Is it all really, isolation, face masks, panic buying, collapsing currencies and ravaged businesses … or is there some hope for the future?
Here the Preservation Society takes a look at what the near future hopefully has for us… there are waiting in the medical background experimental drugs and some tried and testied ones:
Drugs for HIV , rheumatoid arthritis, malaria, the flu and Ebola are serious contenders and are believed to be going through tests right now.
However, the government has refused to confirm if any are being tested on the 2,626 coronavirus patients in the UK – the NHS advises anyone with troublesome symptoms to take paracetamol and rest at home.
Chloroquine phosphate (Malaria)
Doctors are fighting the coronavirus outbreak is chloroquine phosphate, an anti-malarial medication. The drug – sold under the brand name Arlan – kills malaria stopping the tropical disease in its tracks.
Tests of the drug show it has potential in fighting the life-threatening virus.
Experts at the University of Palermo in Italy, as well as a team in Israel, collated the research on the drug in treating the coronavirus.
In their report, they claimed officials in the Netherlands already suggest treating critically-ill patients with the drug.
It is cheap and relatively easy to manufacture.
Hydroxychloroquine (Malaria)
Chinese scientists investigating the other form of chloroquine wrote a letter to a prestigious journal saying its ‘less toxic’ derivative may also help.
Drug giant Sanofi carried out a study on 24 patients, which the French government described as ‘promising’.
French health officials are now planning on a larger trial of the drug, which is used on the NHS to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis as well as malaria.
Lopinavir/ritonavir (HIV)
Lopinavir/ritonavir, marketed as Kaletra and Aluvia, is an anti-HIV medicine.
The drug has shown promise as a way of tackling coronavirus, scientists say, because it is able to bind to the outside of the coronavirus.
It is a class of drug called a protease inhibitor, which essentially stick to an enzyme on a virus which is vital to the virus reproducing. By doing this it blocks the process the virus would normally use to clone itself and spread the infection further.
The drug is available on the NHS and was prescribed around 1,400 times in 2018, either as Kaletra or ritonavir on its own.
Favipiravir (flu)
Favipiravir is the active ingredient in flu drug Avigan which is sold in Japan.
Doctors in China have claimed it was ‘clearly effective’ in patients with the coronavirus after they gave it to 80 people in the cities of Wuhan and Shenzen.
They said it sped up patients’ recovery, reduced lung damage and did not cause any obvious side effects. It is also used to treat yellow fever and foot-and-mouth.
It is not used by the NHS.
Remdesivir (Ebola)
Remdesivir is an anti-viral drug that works in essentially the same way as favipiravir – by crippling the RNA polymerase enzyme, stopping a virus from reproducing.
It was developed around 10 years ago by the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences with the intention of it destroying the Ebola virus. It was pushed aside, however, when other, better candidates emerged.
Remdesivir is not prescribed on the NHS.
Sarilumab (Rheumatoid arthritis)
Sarilumab, a rheumatoid arthritis drug which is marketed as Kevzara and is available to be prescribed on the NHS, is to be trialled on patients in the US.
Pharmaceutical companies Sanofi and Regeneron plan to give the medication to people with the coronavirus to see if it can help calm their immune response. The drug works by blocking part of the immune system which can cause inflammation, or swelling, which is overactive in people with rheumatoid arthritis.
