Abstract

Since its emergence in December 2019, the new coronavirus has killed tens of thousands of people. While social distancing limits the spread of the disease, it’s not enough to end the epidemic. Both vaccines and drugs are a great weapon against viruses, but they take a long time to create. This is why we turned to existing antiviral drugs. 

We chose an anti-HIV treatment because it showed positive results against other coronaviruses. A total of 200 adults with confirmed severe coronavirus infection participated in our trial. Half of them received the anti-HIV treatment while the others served as a control group. We found that these drugs weren’t particularly useful in patients with severe coronavirus infection. The treatment failed to speed up the patients’ improvement. It didn’t reduce the viral load, either. 

[This article is pending review]