The process to produce covid-19 drug advances in the country

Published Friday, April 3, 2020

The process to produce covid-19
drug advances in the country

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

Specialists from the University of Costa Rica and Social Security are working on the process to produce a drug against the virus.

On Thursday, it was reported that in Costa Rica there was an increase to 396 patients infected with the coronavirus covid-19.

When a patient successfully recovers from the covid-19 disease, the body generates immunity or resistance to the virus. This substance of immunity can be extracted from the plasma of the blood and used to produce a life-saving medicine for other people contaminated with the virus, said the University of Costa Rica in its statement.

According to the specialists, the element with immunity is vital to create a medicine due to the antibodies or immunoglobulins that neutralize the virus.

Social Security has proposed the investigation process and eventual production of the drug to specialists from various institutions, such as the Clodomiro Picado Research Institute, the Costa Rican Research Institute, and the Clinical Laboratory of the Blood Bank.

According to the University, Costa Rica has the necessary potential in generating such treatment and the possibility of making it available to the entire country.

"The quality control tests of immunoglobulin preparations purified with the methodology developed by the institute have already been evaluated," said Henning Jensen-Pennington, director of the University. "The results have shown that they meet all the required international standards for these medications.”

Globally immunoglobulin therapy has become a promising hope in the face of the current coronavirus pandemic. Even large companies such as Spain’s pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturer Grifols forecast their production for July 2020, said the University in its statement.

The first phase of the process to produce the medicine is the collection of plasma from donors who, after having suffered the disease, are completely recovered.

The specialists in the laboratories would do the necessary analyses to prove that the plasma is free of the coronavirus and other pathogens.

In a second phase, the specialists of the Clodomiro Picado Institute begin with the preparation of purified antibodies from the plasma. These purified antibodies will be developed in the drug against the virus.

In the final phase, Social Security would apply the drug with the virus's neutralizing capacity to patients. According to the University, this drug would be applied first in patients infected with the virus who have serious health conditions.

However, for the process of producing the drug, the permits from the Ministry of Health are still under investigation, because this type of drug is not yet produced in the Institute's laboratories.

Also, the process is only in the initial phase of contacting people who have overcome the disease and must agree to donate their plasma, said the University.

According to the specialists, after obtaining the approval of the ministry and enough plasma to develop the drug, it is estimated that the production process will take approximately one month. This includes quality control tests to obtain the first batch of medicine.

The medicine will be in an antibody solution, where it’ll be introduced into patients intravenously. The dose will vary according to the patient's need.

It is calculated that for 25 liters of plasma recovered from donors, 50 antidotes of 50 ml each can be generated. Depending on the condition of the sick person, one antidote unit will be enough to save a life, said the University.

As of Thursday there are 21 new confirmed cases, bringing the total to 396 patients infected with coronavirus covid-19 in the country.

Of those patients, 17 are being treated in public hospitals, 11 of them have been reported in intensive care with delicate health conditions.

The patients' ages range from 1 to 87 with an average age of 40. Of those, 14 are children under the age of 13, 356 are between 18 and 70 years old, and 26 are elder patients over the age of 70.

Of those infected, 192 are women (48%) and 204 are men (52%). It was reported 366 infected cases are Costa Ricans and 30 are foreigners.

Six coronavirus patients fully recovered. Two of those were U.S. citizens who were reported to have left the country.

Seven patients are already in the process of receiving results from their latest medical tests hoping to be cleared and classified as fully recovered from the virus, as well as not being a threat to the public.

As was previously reported, two patients hospitalized in intensive care at San Rafael Hospital in Alajuela Province, both 87-year-old seniors died due to the coronavirus covid-19.

Since the virus was detected in the country in the first week of March, 3,954 people have been ruled out.

The rapid spread of the virus throughout Costa Rica left the ministry to create a map of the country on the UNED University website, where the number of infected people in each canton is updated daily.

As of today, the pandemic has killed 52,983 people around the world, according to recent statistics reported by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

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