Chinese medics find good success rate in treating coronavirus patients with drugs on trials

China has expanded and optimised the utilisation of drugs and therapies in the treatment of the novel coronavirus disease to block the conversion of mild cases to severe cases and save critically ill patients, health officials said.

Tocilizumab, with the common brand name Actemra, has been included in China's latest version of diagnosis and treatment guidelines on COVID-19, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Zhou Qi, deputy secretary-general and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said at a press conference Friday that the drug Tocilizumab has been found effective to block the inducement of the inflammatory storm.

In an initial clinical trial, Tocilizumab was used in 20 severe COVID-19 cases. And the body temperatures of all the patients dropped within one day. Nineteen of the patients were discharged from the hospital within two weeks while one got better, Zhou was quoted as saying.

Currently, the drug is under clinical trials in 14 hospitals in Wuhan, the epicentre of the epidemic, Zhou said.

Ever since the virus started spreading fiercely after it reportedly originated from a wild animal market in Wuhan in December last year, medical professionals in China and abroad are making frantic efforts to find a cure to treat thousands of patients while efforts are underway to produce a vaccine to halt it in its tracks.

China's National Health Commission (NHC) said on Friday that the death toll in the novel coronavirus outbreak has touched 3,042 with 30 new fatalities while the confirmed casesm rose to 80,552 amid signs that the dreaded COVID-19 was stabilising, including in the worst-affected Hubei province.

The NHC said on Friday that 53,726 patients have been discharged so far in China after recovery.

Chinese officials said earlier that more than half of the patients are being treated with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in Wuhan which helped many of them to recover.

China has also ordered field trials of a number of drugs to treat the virus.

Several antiviral drugs have been applied in clinical trials against the novel coronavirus disease and some have shown fairly good clinical efficacy, according to Chinese officials.

Chinese researchers have narrowed down their focus to a few existing drugs, including Chloroquine Phosphate, Favipiravir and Remdesivir, after multiple rounds of screening, Zhang Xinmin, director of the China National Center for Biotechnology Development under the Ministry of Science and Technology said in February.

Also a total of 14 testing products for the novel coronavirus disease have gained approval for clinical use in China, an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology said Friday.

Seven of them have been approved by the National Medical Products Administration and put into clinical use in the past two weeks, Xinhua report said.