While coronavirus is at the early stage, Chloroquine eliminates it, says Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye

Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, director general of NAFDAC (National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control) has claimed patients who make use of chloroquine especially when the virus is at the early stage should eliminate it from the body. 

She further went ahead that with  Remdesivir, a drug which many experts have claimed it can help in eliminating the virus is more expensive than chloroquine. 

Prof. Adedeye added that a number of countries in West Africa have embraced the use of chloroquine. 

In her words;

“In March 20, this year, just before the lockdown, I had a press briefing. At that time, people did not understand what clinical trial treatment meant. Once they hear treatment, they think you can use it anyhow. But clinical trial treatment is a research study to see whether the drug will work or not.

“In the press briefing, I said I was going through literature to see what others have done and I saw in a particular literature a reliable publication of an article about Chloroquine and Remdesivir (that time nobody was even talking of Remdesivir). This was February of this year.

“They said in the cell culture, Remdesivir and Chloroquine killed COVID-19 viruses, that is, invitro – in the laboratory. But you cannot translate that to humans unless a clinical trial is done.

“I kept looking. About two weeks or so later in early March (this was at a time when COVID-19 was at its peak in China); there was a publication where 100 patients were treated with Chloroquine across ten hospitals in six cities, including Wuhan. It said that all of them recovered from the symptoms. They called it that time pneumonia symptoms.

“In the cells, in the lab, Remdesivir and Chloroquine killed COVID-19. At what stage would they be more effective? We didn’t know at that point. Now, we are realising that Chloroquine is effective at the early stage."