Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is part of an international clinical trial effort to test an antiviral treatment that could stop COVID-19 in its early stages.
The study tested participants by giving them four pills twice a day. Participants weren’t told if they had received the active medication or a placebo; within a week, they said, their symptoms were better. Within two weeks, they had recovered, Yahoo News reported.
“I don’t know if we got the treatment, but I kind of feel like we did,” Miranda Kelly,44, said. “To have all these underlying conditions, I felt like the recovery was very quick.”
Kelly tested positive for the virus in June and her husband Joe, 46, also fell ill of the virus. The two agreed to join the clinical trial.
Regardless of knowing which treatment they received, the two have played a role in developing what may be the next aid against the coronavirus: a short-term daily pill meant to help fight the virus in its early stages after diagnosis and conceivably prevent symptoms from forming after exposure.
“Oral antivirals have the potential to not only curtail the duration of one’s Covid-19 syndrome, but also have the potential to limit transmission to people in your household if you are sick,” said Timothy Sheahan, a virologist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill who has helped pioneer the therapies.
Antivirals are already used as treatments for other viral infections like HIV and hepatitis C, including Tamiflu, a widely prescribed medicine that can shorten the duration of the flu and reduce the risk of someone having to go to the hospital if they take it quick enough.
So far, three promising antivirals for Covid are being tested in clinical trials. Results are expected as soon as late fall or winter, said Carl Dieffenbach, director of the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who is overseeing antiviral development.
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