A small drug trial in Hong Kong to fight Covid-19 has yielded positive results.

It was discovered that a triple drug cocktail consisting of antiviral medicines helped swiftly reduce the amount of virus in the bodies of those infected and relieved their symptoms.

Used HIV drug

The trial involved 127 patients.

A control group received just the HIV drug.

The other experimental group of patients were given the cocktail made up of the HIV medicine lopinavir–ritonavir, the hepatitis drug ribavirin, and the multiple sclerosis treatment interferon beta.

The findings showed that on average, people who got the triple drug mix reached the point of no detectable virus at seven days, while those in the control group did so in 12 days.

The findings were published in the Lancet medical journal.

Cut risk to healthcare workers

Kwok-Yung Yuen, a professor at the University of Hong Kong, co-led the research.

He said the combination drugs rapidly suppress the amount of virus in a patient's body, relieve symptoms, and reduce the risk to healthcare workers.

He said the combination drug's effect in reducing "viral shedding", which is when the virus is detectable and potentially transmissible, lowers risk to health workers.

Although the findings were encouraging, the triple drug's effect has to be tested in larger numbers of patients and on people with more severe Covid-19 infection, and in further randomised trials.

Combinations of different drugs have worked in treating the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, and approaching Covid-19 in similar fashion could also work.

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