Despite the numerous clinical trials carried out around the world to lead to a treatment against Covid-19, no research has yet yielded satisfactory results, more than four months after the appearance of the virus.
330 in China, 125 in the United States and 45 in France. This is the non-exhaustive number of clinical trials currently carried out to try to find a vaccine against Covid-19, responsible for more than 275,000 deaths worldwide. According to a database referenced by the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, more than 800 studies are carried out around the world.
Given the urgency of the situation, many of them do not meet standard protocols: lack of validation and publication in a scientific journal, small sample size, etc. If many of these studies are carried out using existing treatments, like the one on hydrochloroquine directed by Prof. Raoult in France and which has caused much ink to flow, none of them, however, allows us to achieve a convincing result for the moment.
Among these studies, we can mention the European clinical trial Discovery, launched on March 22 and conducted on five treatments, including four experimental, across eight countries including France. The first results could be unveiled on May 14, according to an announcement by Emmanuel Macron.
Discovery trial: insufficient number of patients
But things do not go quite as planned: less than 800 have been recruited to date, almost exclusively in France, against an initial target of more than 3,000 patients. In an interview with the newspaper The world on May 1, Prof. Yazdan Yazdanpanah, head of the infectious and tropical diseases department at Bichat hospital deplored “thee lack of coordination between the Europeans in which the test was to take place “. “This situation is explained in particular by the strong competition in research against Covid-19”, explains the researcher.
Originally, Discovery was supposed to be carried out on 3,200 patients in eight European countries: France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom. The participating patients were to be divided into five groups.
One type of treatment had to be tested per group: conventional care, experimental antiviral against Ebola, combination of two antivirals (lopinavir / ritonavir) used against HIV … as well as the famous hydroxychloroquine tested by Professor Raoult.
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