Coronavirus treatments: A list of the most promising medical treatments for COVID-19

The HIV drug Kaletra did not show benefits in keeping patients alive, reducing the amount of virus in patients, or shortening their hospital stays, the researchers concluded in a New England Journal of Medicine article published on March 18.

Yet, on March 18, the WHO said it will conduct a massive global study on four experimental COVID-19 treatment arms including Kaletra. The other three are remdesivir, the anti-malaria pill chloroquine, and a combination of Kaletra and the immunomodulator interferon-beta.

Read more about Kaletra.

Actemra, sold by Roche, and Kevzara, sold by Regeneron and Sanofi, are both in the class of medicines called IL-6 inhibitors. They may work in COVID-19 patients by inhibiting a biological mechanism that could be driving an overactive inflammatory response in patients' lungs.

Both drugs have already started late-stage clinical trials aiming to provide a definitive answer to whether or not they can help COVID-19 patients.

Read more about Actemra and trial testing.

The donor blood plasma, when transferred to a new patient, could fight the virus and boost an immune response since it already has the antibodies against the virus.

Two recent trials — one published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and another in the journal PNAS — have shown promising results on a small group of severely ill patients with COVID-19.

Read more about the treatment's promising results.

An old, generic malaria drug, called chloroquine, has rapidly become a leading potential coronavirus treatment, as President Donald Trump has repeatedly touted its potential against the virus and the US government has built up a massive stockpile of the medication. A much more widely prescribed version called hydroxychloroquine is also being tested against the virus.

Neither chloroquine nor hyrdoxychloroquine have any high-quality clinical evidence that shows they are effective against COVID-19.

Read more about ongoing clinical trial experiments.

Avigan outperformed another antiviral drug called arbidol in a trial conducted in China, according to a recent report of those findings. The flu drug helped COVID-19 patients recover seven days faster than the patients on arbidol and reduced the frequency of symptoms like coughing and fever. The drug is not approved in the US.

A couple of ongoing studies in China are projected to finish in late April or May.

Read more about Avigan.

Before a drug can be tested on patients it must go through a series of tests in a laboratory setting. Therefore, these drugs will take longer before they are available to the public. Some of the promising drug candidates under research right now include:

TAK-888: Japan's largest pharmaceutical company is researching the possibility to PRODUCE A hyperimmune globulin called TAK-888 from the blood of COVID-19 patients. Takeda hopes to have the plasma product available for COVID-19 patients in 9-18 months.

Antibody treatment: The Indianapolis drugmaker Eli Lilly is working with AbCellera to start testing an antibody therapy designed to fight COVID-19 in humans by the end of July. AbCellera identified more than 500 human antibodies that could be potent against the virus from a blood sample of a recovered coronavirus patient.

Another antibody treatment: San Francisco-based Vir Biotechnology is involved in several COVID-19 research projects. Since the end of January, Vir has inked research collaborations with Biogen, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, WuXi Biologics and the NIH. The companies are not yet providing timetables for selecting a leading drug candidate or starting human trials.