China claims to develop ‘effective’ new drug to halt coronavirus without vaccine

A new drug is being developed in China to control the Novel coronavirus, which scientists believe has the power to stop the Pandemic which began in China late last year and has now spread around the world.

China’s prestigious Peking University is testing a drug. Researchers say not only speeds up the recovery of sick people but also provides short-term immunity to the virus.

Director of the university’s Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics Sunney Xie, also told international news agency AFP that the drug had been tested on animals.

He said that when they injected antibodies into the infected mice, the viral load decreased after 5 days, which means that the drug can prevent the disease.

The drug uses neutralized antibodies that protect the human immune system cells from the virus, which the Chinese research team separated from the blood of 60 healthy people.

The results of the study, published in the journal Cell, show that the use of antibodies reduces the potential treatment and recovery time of COVID-19.

He said the drug would be available for use anytime this year or before a possible second wave in the winter.

Sunney Xie further said that clinical trials are being planned and will take place in Australia and other countries, as the number of cases in China is staggering.

He said that these neutralized antibodies are expected to prevent the pandemic in the form of a specific drug.

According to Chinese medical officials, five vaccines against the coronavirus have entered the human testing phase in China.

But the World Health Organization stated that a vaccine could take 12 to 18 months to develop.

Scientists are also talking about the benefits of plasma therapy, which is being implemented in Pakistan.

Plasma therapy has been tested on more than 700 patients in China, and scientists say the results have been encouraging, but Sunney Xie says plasma supplies are limited, while their medicine uses 14 neutralized antibodies. Which can be mass-produced soon.

The use of antibodies in the form of medicine is not a new method, but has been successfully tested during global epidemics of other diseases such as HIV, Ebola and MERS‐CoV.

But the new drug, developed in China, also provides protection from the virus for some time, meaning that people will not be able to get the disease for some time.

The study found that the rats that used the antibody were protected from the virus even after being infected with the virus.

The researchers said that this would provide short-term protection to medical personnel and was expected to extend the period to several months.

They said more time and resources were needed to develop the vaccine, but hoped that the new drug would make it possible to prevent corona virus on a global scale faster and more effectively.

Sunney Xie said that they have the ability to prevent the Coronavirus Pandemic with an effective drug, even without a vaccine.

Also Read: Coronavirus vaccine: Preliminary test showed promising result