Covid-19 report: Promising new tests, but disappointing hydroxychloroquine results
Promising new testsPolymerase chain reaction tests, which check for the genetic material of the virus. In South Africa, when you get tested for Covid-19, this is currently what’s used.
Antibody tests, on the other hand, detect if you have previously been infected with Covid-19. These tests give a positive result even after you’ve recovered. They’re usually less expensive to make and usually give results quicker than PCR tests. This is vital for surveillance to see what percentage of the population has been infected. From this we can learn how fast the virus spreads and how much immunity people have against reinfection. However, they don’t tell you if you’re currently infected.
The study compared the time it took for the patients on each regimen, all with mild to moderate Covid-19 symptoms, to test negative from when they started treatment – in other words, be officially recovered. It took on average seven days for patients on the more intensive regimen, versus 12 days for the lopinavir-ritonavir alone. None of the 127 trial participants died.
It’s not a clinical trial – only an observational study – and this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the end of the road for hydroxychloroquine and Covid-19. Four of them are responsible for approximately 30% of cases of the common cold in humans. Two of them caused recent epidemics that had considerable associated mortality: Sars-CoV-1, which emerged in 2002 to 2003 and caused approximately 10% mortality, and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus , which emerged in 2012 and is still active, and causes approximately 35% mortality.
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