Astronaut minister defies science and announces cure for coronavirus.
While the entire world searches for a vaccine against the coronavirus, Marcos Pontes says that Brazil will have a cure for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, by mid-May.
247 - The Minister of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications (MCTIC), Marcos Pontes, stated that a drug with 94% effectiveness against the coronavirus in laboratory tests conducted by Brazilian scientists may be available to the population by mid-May. Seven hospitals are participating in the research protocol for the drug, whose name has not been revealed by the ministry. Brazil has at least 35 confirmed cases and 2,2 deaths caused by COVID-19.
"I can't tell you 'to participate you take the medicine and you can go home,' you have to be under very strict observation. The medicine has to be given at the exact moment, there are a series of tests that they will do daily on these patients. When you're talking about 500 patients, we're estimating that it will take four weeks to run, let's say, these 500 patients in the trial," the minister estimates in an interview with... CNN Brazil.
Doctors will be testing the drug's effects on patients for five days. The people being studied will remain hospitalized for two weeks. According to the minister, the drug "has no serious side effects." "So, then doctors can prescribe that medicine for the Coronavirus. This whole process, then, we imagine that after these four weeks, around the middle of May, it will be finished, which will be very good."