Coronavirus COVID-19 E-Book

Jean-Pierre Wenger

• Herausgeber: BookThug
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 26

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Time is the most important factor in this race against the clock. From Marseille, specialist Didier Raoult claims to have found an effective and economical treatment against COVID-19: chloroquine. Other people bet on remdesivir, proven in previous outbreaks of coronavirus, SARS and MERS, or on the combination of ritonavir and lopinavir, used for HIV treatment, while others speak of the combination of the latter with interferon beta, a drug used for Hepatitis C. In the middle of this scenario, another treatment based on the plasma of the patients infected with COVID-19 and recovered, starts to gain attention. The path of immunoglobulin, human plasma and the Catalan laboratory Grifols is associated with a history of geopolitical strategies and global health policies, in which both Wikileaks and Bill Gates play a fundamental role, and in which international cooperation is presented as the only way to confront this horrible pandemic.

Leseprobe

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1.- Introduction

In late 2010, Wikileaks revealed a list compiled in 2008 by the US Secretary of State: 300 strategic points all over the world, including natural resources and civil infrastructure. The list included three points located in Spain: the Strait of Gibraltar, the gas pipeline that connects the peninsula with Algeria, and the Catalan pharmaceutical Grifols, from which it was read: “Instituto Grifols SA, Barcelona, Spain: Immune Globuline Intravenous (IGIV)”. People and media began to wonder about this pharmaceutical and, especially, what immunoglobulin was and why it was considered strategic.

Almost a decade later, the same pharmaceutical sneaks back onto the covers of the main websites, this time in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and for having signed an agreement with the FDA and other US agencies for the production of a treatment profiled as the first specifically designed against the novel coronavirus: hyperimmune immunoglobulin. Although there are several ends to tie in the middle of the road, at least we can assure that the strategic role of this pharmaceutical, the world’s leading producer of plasma-derived blood products, is now evident.

The global health crisis unleashed by the coronavirus generated an exceptional situation in which citizens from all over the world were overwhelmed by panic, traffic restrictions, hygiene recommendations, depressed economies and collapsed hospitals. The spread of the epidemic, then a pandemic, also put WHO in the spotlight and started a furious medical and pharmaceutical race to find the right treatment, cure or vaccine.

While the possibility of developing a vaccine requires too much time for the immediacy and urgency demanded by a pandemic, there are different types of drugs and treatments that some hospitals or medical centers around the world have begun to try. Pharmaceutical companies, for their part, place their bets. The development of new drugs also takes a long time, but in the most critical cases, and in exceptional situations such as this, the experimental use of drugs that are already used to treat other diseases is allowed.

The WHO has launched the “Solidarity Trial”, so that medical centers from different countries share information about “results” obtained with the different drugs. Time is the key factor here: it is a race against the clock. From Marseille came the voice of specialist Didier Raoult, who claimed to have found an effective and cheap treatment against the coronavirus: chloroquine, used for malaria. Voices have also emerged betting on the efficacy of remdesivir, which had already been tested in previous outbreaks of coronavirus, SARS and MERS, the combination of ritonavir and lopinavir, used for the treatment of HIV, or the combination of the latter two with interferon beta, a drug used for Hepatitis C.