Walter and Eliza Hall Institute Director Doug Hilton says a cure for the coronavirus could already exist among “medicines which have been approved for other diseases”.
An anti-malarial drug called hydroxychloroquine is being trialed in the United States and France, with the French trial suggesting 75 per cent of the few patients studied presented with no symptoms after five days.
“When a new disease emerges, the quickest way we can find a medicine that might treat it, is to look at all of those medicines which have been approved for other diseases,” Mr Hilton told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.
Mr Hilton said hydroxychloroquine “looked very promising in terms of being able to prevent the replication of the coronavirus in a test tube”.
“I think it’s a really promising idea and one that needs to be tested properly," he said
He stressed the recklessness of going “from a smart idea that a researcher has, to a handing out these drugs 'willy-nilly' across the population”.
Mr Hilton said a “proper clinical trial” involving 2,200 people was being organised among health care workers who experience the greatest exposure to the coronavirus.
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