China approves its first COVID-19 specific treatment therapy

China’s National Medical Products Administration has approved the country’s first medical treatment therapy using a newly developed drug that specifically targets the coronavirus causing the highly contagious disease of COVID-19.

The drug, developed a research team led by Professor Zhang Linqi with the prestigious Tsinghua University of China, uses a cocktail of two antibodies developed by selecting two monoclonal antibodies that inhibit the virus from infecting healthy cells.

The results of mulitple clinical trials of this therapy have showed an 80 percent efficacy in cutting the rates of hospitalization and deaths.

“Our clinical trials were carried out at 111 bases in six countries on four continents, involving multiple centers in China and many other countries. The whole process of clinical trials has demonstrated that the drug is highly safe and efficient, and is capable of reducing the rate of hospitalization and the rate of death by over 80 percent,” said Zhang Linqi, professor with Tsinghua University, who led the research team developing the therapy.

In an interview with China Central Television, Zhang said previous therapies used for treating COVID-19 patients were not as effective as antibodies that specifically target this virus. He said the newly developed therapy could be used on a wide range of patients, including people with chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Zhang’s research team consists of young talents with an average age of less than 30 years. Team members say their rich experience in combating different epidemics in past years has helped a lot.

“[One of the reasons why we can make such an achievement] lies in our rich experience accumulated in our work of combating the MERS, SARS, Zika and Ebola viruses. We have developed many technologies and solutions during those processes. This time, we applied these technologies and solutions in our research and development against COVID-19,” said Zhang Qi, one of the team members.

At the time of starting the research in developing this therapy nearly two years ago, Zhang’s team was already considering the possibility of coronavirus variants, so that the treatment using it can target a wide range of mutant strains.

Zhang and his team will not stop there in the research and development, and that the team has started working on an upgraded version of this treatment therapy, which aims to protect against an even broader spectrum of coronavirus variants.