Nine Malaysian hospitals join global search for Covid-19 cure

CORONAVIRUS | Nine government hospitals in Malaysia have been selected to run trials to test various drugs in hopes of finding a cure for Covid-19.

The trials are part of the "Solidarity Trial" that is being coordinated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and is being conducted all around the world.

In a joint statement today, the Health Ministry and the WHO’s Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore office said the trials will collect reliable data and compare the safety and efficacy of four treatment protocols.

“Malaysia’s participation in this worldwide trial could help find life-saving medicines for Covid-19 through evaluating their safety and effectiveness,” Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said.

He said the ministry has fast-tracked the implementation of the trials and it will commence soon.

These protocols being studied will use different combinations of the drug Remdesivir, Lopinavir/Ritonavir, interferon-beta, chloroquine, and hydroxychloroquine.

The nine hospitals are Tuanku Fauziah Hospital, Sultanah Bahiyah Hospital, Penang Hospital, Sungai Buloh Hospital, Kuala Lumpur Hospital, Malacca Hospital, Tengku Ampuan Afzan Hospital, Sarawak General Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

The study will be led by Pulau Pinang Hospital infectious disease consultant Dr Chow Ting Soo, together with a team of 16 infectious disease physicians and pharmacists as co-investigators.

Health Ministry’s Institute for Clinical Research and Clinical Research Malaysia will help facilitate the implementation of the trial.

“This is our chance, as a global community, to turn the tide against the pandemic. Malaysia will be a valued partner in this trial to evaluate potential treatments that are effective, and to save lives in the global battle to fight this virus,” said the WHO representative for Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore, Dr Ying-Ru Lo.

Hisham (photo) said the trial will adhere to all safety standards set by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency.

Currently, there is no proven treatment for Covid-19 and vaccines are not expected to be ready until at least early-2021.

Instead, treatment protocols focus on managing a patient’s symptoms, although a number of experimental treatments are also being tried.

Well-designed trials such as WHO’s Solidarity Trial will tell whether the experimental treatments will provide better results than the standard care provided.

Many such studies have focused on repurposing existing drugs instead of developing new ones, because the existing drugs have already undergone animal and human safety trials in the past and can be expedited.

Remdesivir is an experimental antiviral drug originally developed to treat Ebola. Human trials showed it had no effect against Ebola, but it showed some effect in animal trials against two coronaviruses related to the one that causes Covid-19.

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are anti-malarial drugs. Petri dish tests showed it had some activity against the virus that cause Covid-19, but only in high - potentially toxic - doses.

Lopinavir and ritonavir are antiviral drugs that are used in combination to treat HIV by inhibiting the assembly of new viruses.

The Solidarity Trial will see the anti-HIV combination used with or without interferon-beta, a drug used to treat multiple sclerosis.

The WHO had launched the Solidarity Trial on March 18. It is expected to recruit thousands of patients across the globe in hopes of gleaning strong evidence of whether the treatments work.

It deemed the four treatment options to be the most promising, and had simplified the trial process in a bid to expedite it.

The WHO said the Solidarity Trial will reduce the time needed by 80 percent, compared to the years it would take to design and conduct a randomised clinical trial that is held as the gold standard in evidence-based medicine. - Mkini