Chloroquine and the Coronavirus Solution

While many people are anxiously awaiting a vaccine solution for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, research from back in the early 2000s shows that there may well be another solution that has already been mentioned but has not received widespread approval since it doesn't fall into the Bill Gates - WHO narrative.

I just wanted to open this posting with a personal note; I took hydroxychloroquine, a drug that is related to chloroquine, for 4 months straight while working in Africa, as an antimalarial prophylaxis and several other times for shorter periods while travelling in malaria-prone areas.  I had no negative side effects from taking the drug.  Interestingly, hydroxychloroquine is one of the most prescribed drugs in the United States and is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus erythematosus.

On August 22, 2005, the following article was published in the Virology Journal:

Interestingly, the article now resides on the National Institutes of Health website at this link; what is ironic is that the NIH is the parent agency of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of which Dr. Anthony Fauci, America's "lead character" and promoter of a vaccine solution in the COVID-19 drama, is the Director.  

The research by Martin J. Vincent et al took place just after the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak, better known as SARS, took place, beginning in late 2002.  This particular novel coronavirus resulted in a total of 8,098 infections which killed 774 people (or 9.6 percent of infected individuals).  According to the CDC, SARS spread mainly through respiratory droplets that were propelled when an infected person coughed or sneezed.  It was believed that these droplets were propelled a distance of up to 3 feet (notice that the CDC did not believe in the six foot/two metre distance currently being enforced by governments as a social distancing order). 

In the 2005 paper, the authors note that there was no effective prophylactic or post-exposure therapy that was available at the time of the outbreak.  Since the SARS-CoV infection had a high mortality rate and spread rapidly, it was important to identify drugs that may be used to either treat the infected or prevent further outbreaks by suppressing the virus.  At the time, several different new methods were evaluated in laboratories including siRNA, passive antibody transfer, DNA vaccination and interferons.  In their study, the authors used chloroquine to test its effectiveness against the SARS-CoV virus.  Chloroquine was discovered in 1934 and has been widely used to treat human diseases including malaria, HIV and autoimmune diseases with no significant detrimental side effects.  

The authors pretreated cells with various concentrations of chloroquine (concentrations that are compatible with treating humans i.e. 0.1µM, 1.0µM and 10µM (micromolar)) and then infected them with the SARS-CoV virus.  The results obtained by the research was rather stunning as shown in this graphic which shows how different concentrations of chloroquine impacted the SARS-CoV virus (less green = less virus):

The authors also noted that post-infection chloroquine treatment was effective at preventing the spread of SARS-CoV infection once infection had occurred.  As little as 0.1 to 1.0 µM of chloroquine reduced the infection by 50 percent and concentrations between 33 and 100µM resulted in 90 percent to 94 percent inhibition as shown here:

Let's close with this summary from the study:

"Chloroquine, a relatively safe, effective and cheap drug used for treating many human diseases including malaria, amoebiosis and human immunodeficiency virus is effective in inhibiting the infection and spread of SARS CoV in cell culture. The fact that the drug has significant inhibitory antiviral effect when the susceptible cells were treated either prior to or after infection suggests a possible prophylactic and therapeutic use." (my bold)

Given that an effective vaccine for the SARS-CoV virus was never developed and still remains elusive, one has to wonder how soon it will be before a safe vaccine is developed for the current SARS-CoV-2 virus.  Rather than experimenting on humans with unproven vaccines, it is a mystery why chloroquine, a known pharmaceutical, is not in widespread use during this pandemic.  The only thing that I can think of is found in the first sentence of the summary from the 2005 chloroquine study; it is a "cheap drug" which will put far less money into the pockets of Big Pharma and its corner office, stock option holding executive teams than a new, "higher tech and sexier" vaccine solution.