Action News Jax has gathered a list of the latest research officials have released regarding a possible COVID-19 vaccine or treatment:

Chloroquine

President Donald Trump announced that a common drug used to fight malaria has shown great promise in treating people infected with COVID-19. The drug, chloroquine, is a medication used to prevent and to treat malaria, as well as a type of liver infection. It was first used to treat malaria in 1944. Excitement has grown about the use of the drug to fight COVID-19, with research studies showing chloroquine is effective at preventing and treating the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome. SARS is in the same coronavirus family as COVID-19. Read more here.

BNT162 vaccine

Pfizer pharmaceutical company announced that it has begun human trials for a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus. Pfizer, along with Germany pharmaceutical company BioNTech, began trials of the vaccine on 360 volunteers in the United States. According to the companies, another 200 patients have enrolled in the trials in Germany. The drug has shown great promise, its makers said. Click here to read how this type of vaccine works.

Convalescent plasma therapy

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of convalescent plasma therapy as an experimental treatment in clinical trials and for critically ill COVID-19 patients without other treatment options. The therapy, which takes antibodies from the blood of a person who has recovered from a virus and transfuses those antibodies into a person sick with that virus, has long been used as a way to help kickstart a person’s immune system. Read more here.

STORY: Coronavirus: Oxford University says it may have vaccine by year’s end

Remdesivir

Dr. Anthony Fauci said results from a clinical trial of a drug for treating the COVID-19 virus has shown “quite good news.”Fauci told reporters at the White House that the data from a study of remdesivir showed patients who took the drug recovered quicker than those who did not. According to the study, the median time of recovery for patients taking the drug was 11 days. The drug’s effectiveness suggests that it may help people who are very sick with the virus to survive it. Read more here.

Coronavirus antibody STI-1499 therapy

A California-based biopharmaceutical company reported that it discovered an antibody that not only shields the body from the novel coronavirus but flushes it out of a person’s system within four days if they are infected, according to a story from Investor’s Business Daily. Sorrento Therapeutics announced the results of their antibody research and the discovery of the STI-1499 antibody. According to the company, STI-1499 provides “100% inhibition” of the COVID-19 virus. Read more here.

Moderna COVID-19 vaccine tests

Biotechnology company Moderna announced that the novel coronavirus vaccine it has been developing is showing such promising results that it plans to launch expanded clinical trials in July. According to the company, in a phase 1 trial, eight patients who received doses of the vaccine at the lowest and middle dose levels tested all produced antibodies to the virus within 15 days of a single dose. Two weeks after receiving a second dose, the company reported that people who received the smallest dose of the vaccine created the same levels of antibodies as people who had recovered from the COVID-19 virus. Those who received a second dose of the medium dose level of vaccine produced significantly more antibodies than someone who had been infected by the virus and recovered. Read more here.

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