Researchers at two Israeli hospitals are reporting positive results in preliminary tests for a potential cure for COVID-19.
At the Integrated Cancer Prevention Center at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, Professor Nadir Arber tested a new drug called EXO-CD24, which he claimed was an inexpensive treatment for the new coronavirus, if taken daily for five consecutive days.
According to Ynet news, Arber has so far found the drug to be impressively effective, with 29 of the 30 patients he tested on were discharged from the hospital in 3 days, although the severity of his conditions was not specified before taking the medicine.
At Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center, doctors have been testing another potential cure in critically ill patients. The drug, Allocetra, was developed by the hospital’s Rheumatology and Internal Medicine Research Center, to deal with hyperactive immune systems that cause increased secretion of cytokines, a protein responsible for various functions of the immune system.
They found that 19 of the 21 patients it was tested on improved in less than a week.
While the results can be promising, with only 50 test cases between the two drugs, the real effectiveness of either is far from confirmed.
In contrast, almost 50,000 people participated in the third phase of testing the Pfizer-Biotech vaccine before the drug was released for public use. No placebo test was used by any of the hospitals, which means that there is no way of knowing whether or not the patients’ recovery was due to the medication or may have occurred on their own.
It would also not be the first time that Israeli medical researchers have made bold statements in the early stages, but have failed to produce significant results in the future.
In January 2019, researchers at an Israeli start-up said they would have a cure for cancer – yes, all cancer – within a year.
Two years later, cancer still kills nearly 10 million people a year.
The ad was widely criticized by oncologists and other cancer researchers, who said that all the claim did was create false hopes in cancer patients and their families, who may already be inundated with offers of experimental treatments, many of which vary from ineffective at blows.
It remains to be seen whether one or both treatments against coronavirus will have the same fate and will fail or lead to real results in generalized tests.
Professor Arber appealed to the Israeli health ministry for permission to start further tests, Ynet reported.