The National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Dr Sani Aliyu, on Wednesday said Nigeria has not licensed any medication for treatment of COVID-19 patients.
Dr. Aliyu who spoke stated on Channels Television’s breakfast show, Sunrise Daily was reacting to reports that some drugs and local herbs are available as cure for COVID-19.
According to him, no medication has been confirmed for the disease.
He said, “I must make it very clear at the moment, there is no medication that has been confirmed to be effective and licenced for COVID-19 infection, None.”
He, however, noted that the United States of America had given temporal approval for the use of an anti-viral drug called Remdesivir for a clinical trial in the quest to find a cure for the pandemic.
Remdesivir is an antiviral drug initially developed to treat Ebola which was given after a major trial found that it boosted recovery in serious COVID-19 patients.
The approval is the latest step in a global push to find viable treatments and a vaccine for the coronavirus, which has left half of humanity under some form of lockdown, hammered the world economy, and infected more than 3.3 million people.
Nigeria curently has 2,950 confirmed cases of the highly contagious coronavirus which has infected over three million people globally and killed thousands.
With additional reporting from Channels
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