New coronavirus: a “promising” antiviral drug administered to a patient discharged from the hospital

A 48-year-old Bordeaux resident hospitalized 22 days after being infected with the new coronavirus, now undetectable in his body, was treated with remdesivir, a “promising” antiviral, said his medical team on Friday.

Of Chinese origin, this resident of Bordeaux, in the southwest of France, had been hospitalized on January 23, the day after his return from a trip to China which had taken him to Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease. He left on Thursday, announcing to AFP that he was “no longer carrying the virus”.

The remdesivir, the American Gilead, “”acts directly on the virus to prevent its proliferation,” said to the press the P ^r Denis Malvy, Head of Unit for Tropical Diseases and traveler Universitaire Hospital Center (CHU) Pellegrin.

It is a “small molecule capable of gaining all of the compartments of the body and which we know it diffuses perfectly into the lungs, the target organ of the disease,” added the doctor, adding that the drug is administered intravenously for ten days and the patient “tolerated it”.

It is “today, in the state of knowledge, the most promising candidate for an evaluation”, he added, adding that the choice of this drug had been made “collegially at the national level, in consultation with WHO ”(World Health Organization).

It will be the subject of a comparative therapeutic trial in China with the coordination of the WHO “in the days to come””

P ^r Malvy spoke of a “second candidate”, lopinavir used against HIV-AIDS, ritonavir, which was the subject of a trial in China and whose results are pending.

The Bordeaux patient left the CHU “without clinical signs” and is “no longer carrying any trace of the presence of the virus”, in the current state of knowledge, added the doctor. It will continue to be followed regularly.