Worldwide, there are 153 drugs and vaccines against covid-19 in testing

Currently, there are no approved treatments or vaccines for covid-19, a disease caused by the new coronavirus that has killed more than 440,000 people worldwide. In Brazil there are already more than 45,000 victims. But by the beginning of June, there were 153 drugs and vaccines being tested in 1,765 studies with patients who contracted covid-19. Most of the drugs, however, are still in the very early stages of the studies. Some of the work that has progressed the most has been with chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine antimalarials, but the results are not very encouraging. Drugs have been shown to be ineffective in treating the disease. "Unlike chloroquine, dexamethasone is a medicine with biological plausibility to be an adjunct to the treatment of covid-19. The results announced show a significant difference in mortality. However, for this medication to actually be as effective in real life as it was in the scientific study, the intensive care offered in our ICUs needs to be of high quality. The basics need to be well done so that dexamethasone can actually save a third of those treated," says doctor and researcher Ricardo Schnekenberg, who has been following clinical studies against the disease. Another eye-catching drug is antiviral remdesivir, originally used against Ebola. A preliminary study published may 22 in the New England Journal showed that recovery time in coronavirus patients was shorter (11 days) for those who took the drug compared to patients who received placebo (15 days). Mortality was lower, but not significantly. Also noteworthy is tocilizumab, which prevents the so-called inflammatory storm, but the study done with the drug so far has had few patients. Brazil is also testing the drug.