Some fellow blockchain nerds seem to have helped kickstart what could be a major breakthrough solution to the current coronavirus COVID-19 crisis that has engulfed the globe.
The two noted blockchain industry players fired up a started a media storm followed by a new repository online for medical professionals and scientists to crowdsource intelligence and data to help solve the pandemic.
Last week, a well-known blockchain investor from Blocktown Capital, James Todaro tweeted to a paper he and fellow blockchain aficionado and founder of IKU Founder Gregory Rigano wrote on March 13, 2020 (the original has been taken down by Google), that an 85-year-old malaria drug called chloroquine (and hydroxychloroquine) was a potential treatment and preventative against the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
Hydroxychloroquine (brand name Plaquenil) is an inexpensive, globally available drug (tablet) that was approved for widespread medical use since 1955. It is commonly used today to treat malaria, systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis.
Elon Musk picked up on the tweet on March 16, 2020, and it’s now raging through the media, with US President Donald Trump also echoing that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine were both potential solutions during a March 19, 2020 press meeting.
Musk followed up with:
Hydroxychloroquine probably better https://t.co/FWn2kh1LZx pic.twitter.com/wQODHiFeWT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2020
To top it off, a French scientist, Didier Raoult M.D/Ph.D, recently conducted a controlled clinical study has shown that 100 per cent of patients that received a combination of HCQ and Azithromycin tested negative and were virologically cured within 6 days of treatment.
In addition, recent guidelines from South Korea and China report that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are effective antiviral therapeutic treatments for novel coronavirus.
Forbes has also reported that Hydroxychloroquine was determined to be effective in killing the deadly bug in laboratory experiments, citing findings published March 9 in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal.
The has now led to a new website from Todaro and Rigano called CovidTrial.io – An Open Data Clinical Trial for COVID-19 Prevention. The project is set up for an independent group of scientists and physicians working to share data and work on an open-data clinical trial for the prevention of COVID-19, through the use of hydroxychloroquine in combination with other therapeutic agents, for prevention of SARS-COV2 infection in high-risk health care workers.
“Unlike a typical commercial drug trial, our objective is to share trial data with the public* and health-care professionals as close to real-time as possible (with a reasonable level of data quality assurance). Given the rapidly spreading coronavirus pandemic, we’re looking for every possible means to fast-track the effort.”
The project is led by Rigano with consulting from Didier Raoult, MD & Ph.D who ran the successful French trials and Dr. Chandra Duggirala, MD who is also the CEO and founder of blockchain project Portal.
