Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said local scientists have designed “a highly effective antiviral” that decimates coronavirus without causing any side-effects. The drug will be subject to certification by the WHO, he said.
“I want to say that Venezuela has developed a medicine that annihilates 100 percent of the coronavirus,” Maduro said on Sunday, describing it as a “highly effective antiviral.”
The remedy has been designed by The Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC), which had been working on a cure to the deadly virus for the past six months, the president noted.
The medicine is based on a molecule called TR-10, which was isolated and, when pitted against the virus, proved its absolute effectiveness, he claimed.
Maduro said that the study has already been reviewed by experts and scientists, and will be presented to the World Health Organization (WHO) so that it can ratify its findings.
As he touted a potential breakthrough in the Covid-19 therapy, Maduro said that Venezuela looks forward “to offering this treatment to the world”, congratulating the IVIC with “this great contribution to humanity.” The mass production of the drug will be facilitated through “international alliances,” he said, without elaborating.
The newly-developed drug is completely safe to use by humans, the institute claimed, insisting it “does not affect healthy molecules in the body” and is free from any side effects.
The studies were conducted on the virus cells isolated from Venezuela’s coronavirus patients, Gabriela Jiménez, Venezuela’s Minister of Science and Technology, said, shedding more light on the potential game-changer in the battle against the Covid-19.
The molecule is an ursolic acid derivative, which “has shown 100 percent inhibition of virus replication in vitro [outside of a living organism],” she said, as cited by the EFE News Agency.
Earlier this month, Venezuela became the first Latin American nation to receive the batch of Russian Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine. Some 2,000 people are expected to be immunized with the vaccine in Venezuela as part of the phase III trial. The jab was registered in Russia in August, making the inoculation the world’s first registered vaccine.
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