"It’s going to be a long but necessary wait."
"It’s going to be a long but necessary wait."
Italy, one of the worst-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, is already utilizing advanced technology to fight the deadly virus. It has started to deploy drones to take the temperatures of people out on the streets despite stringent quarantine measures.
Here, we don't have the capability to use advanced technology on a wide scale to contain the virus, but that does not mean we cannot do whatever it takes to at least control its spread.
Our Department of Health is already taking steps to update protocols on the use of rapid test kits as part of government moves to strengthen its hand in the fight against the viral disease.
Late last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved five rapid test kits and a more accurate five-minute test from a US manufacturer which can detect coronavirus infections.
The FDA clarified, however, that swab samples from the throat and nose must still undergo a confirmatory test using the machine-based method.
Rapid test kits can provide results within minutes or hours after extracting a blood sample from a patient, which is faster than the 24 to 48-hour time frame set by the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine to determine if a person is COVID-19 positive.
However, rapid test kits only detect the presence of antibodies or protein found in the blood that is produced in response to foreign substance. Traditional kits are deemed more accurate since they are processed through a real-time polymerase chain reaction or RT-PCR machine that can detect the presence of the actual coronavirus.
The more important issue is not just being able to monitor infections through mass testing but also this: How close are we to a cure?
Here's what I have gathered so far from various news sources.
Scientists are approaching the issue from different angles. Some teams are looking at the effects of existing medicines as potential treatments. Others are experimenting with repurposing common drugs, or using cutting-edge technologies to come up with radically new types of vaccines.
The World Health Organization has selected four drugs or combinations for a large scale global trial involving patients from Asia to South America. These are the experimental antiviral treatment remdesivir; a combination of two HIV drugs, lopinavir and ritonavir; those two drugs plus interferon beta, an immune system medication; and the antimalaria drug hydroxychloroquine.
Remdevisir is deemed one of the most promising treatments. It is already in the final stages of clinical trials in Asia. Doctors in China have reported it has proven effective in fighting the disease.
The other three appear to be either too toxic for the human body or the research on effectiveness is limited to "anecdotal" evidence, cautioned Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a global organization based in Oslo, Norway, is partnering with the French Institut Pasteur-led consortium to invest an initial $4.9 million in eight different vaccine candidates against COVID-19 around the world.
Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Center, meanwhile, are also looking at a potential new vaccine based on their previous ground research on the similar viruses SARS and MERS.
But we shouldn't expect a quick fix, experts are saying.
The exploratory phase for a potential COVID-19 vaccine is only the first step as it should be followed by the preclinical stage, clinical development, regulatory review/approval, manufacturing and quality control, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The National Institute of Health in the US is working with Moderna, a relatively new firm founded in 2010, on human trials this month. If all goes to plan, their product could be available in about a year and a half, according to Fauci.
In China, a vaccine co-developed by CanSino Biologics and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences started its first stage clinical trial in Wuhan on March 16 and has been proceeding smoothly, with the results expected to be published this month.
The biotech company Stemirna Therapeutics in China has also launched a program with the Shanghai East Hospital of Tongji University to develop a mRNA vaccine, which has a comparatively shorter development and production cycle. The mRNA vaccine is expected to enter clinical trials in mid-April, according to Xinhua news agency.
Chinese researchers published in early January the genetic sequence of the virus, thus opening the floodgates for dozens of research labs across the world to find effective vaccines.
On March 16, the first human trial of the COVID-19 vaccine was reported to start on four patients at the US Kaiser Permanente research facility in Seattle, Washington. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed it "an incredible achievement", but experts have raised cautious hopes that a vaccine will be ready only within 18 months.
Scientists caution that it normally takes between 10 and 15 years for a drug to go from development through testing phases and onto licensing and large-scale manufacture.
What all this tells us is that we have to hunker down in the next 18 months to two years while waiting for a cure for COVID-19. It's going to be a long wait, but it's necessary for the world to escape the clutches of the contagion.