Doctors at a Bangkok, Thailand, hospital say they’ve successfully halted the coronavirus in an elderly patient.
Doctors claim that a 70-year-old woman from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the disease, was transferred to a Thai hospital, given a drug “cocktail” of HIV and flu medications, and within 48 hours, switched from testing positive to testing negative for the disease. The doctors practice at Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok.
Lung specialist Dr. Kriangska Atipornwanich told Reuters:
“This is not the cure, but the patient’s condition has vastly improved. From testing positive for 10 days under our care, after applying this combination of medicine the test result became negative within 48 hours,”
The successful treatment combined the HIV medications lopinavir and ritonavir with large doses of the flu drug oseltamivir.
Reuters reports that Chinese health officials have already been using HIV and flu drugs in an attempt to vanquish the sickness, but in Thailand, “the doctor increased the dosage of one of the drugs,” said Somsak Akkslim, director-general of the Medical Services Department, referring to the flu medicine Oseltamivir.
Ecowatch.com reported that the woman turned around within just hours of getting the cocktail of medications:
“The woman given the successful treatment was 70-years-old according to Reuters and 71-years-old according to the Bangkok Post. She had first been admitted to Hua Hin Hospital and then transferred to Rajavithi Hospital on Jan. 29. Her symptoms were severe, and she had tested positive for the virus for 10 days. But 48 hours after treatment, that changed.
“The treatment, as well as the recovery, is fast,” Atipornwanich said, according to the Bangkok Times.”
The news couldn’t come at a better time. Both the U.S. and United Nations health experts have labeled the coronavirus from Wuhan a global emergency. CNN reports that health experts are deeply concerned about the virus:
“Right now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is the only place in the United States that can confirm whether a patient has the virus, which has killed more than 420 peopleand infected more than 17,000 in China.”
And you can see why the concern is deep. Ecowatch.com reports:
“It is spreading much faster than SARS or MERS, but slower than the flu or measles. However, while SARS killed 10 percent of those infected and MERS kills about a third, the new coronavirus currently has a fatality rate of two percent, and that is likely to drop as milder cases emerge.
However, the 1918 flu epidemic killed 20 to 50 million people despite having a mortality rate of 2.5 percent. This was due to its fast spread and the state of medical care at the time.”
Air travel to China has been cut off by several countries. The U.S. has announced that most people coming from China will not be allowed into the country.
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