MESSICO
Exclusive: ‘We’re winning’ - Mexico’s coronavirus czar sees victory in sight
“...Mexico has done the fewest tests per capita to detect the coronavirus among the nations of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), or just 0.4 test per 1,000 inhabitants, against an OECD average of 22.9.
However, tests are not imperative for a sound policy, Lopez-Gatell said.
“You don’t need the number of cases. What you need is to understand the data and understand what the mechanics of an epidemic are to make the most appropriate decisions,” he said.
“Some people say: ‘We’re blind, we don’t have information.’ The blind one is the one who wants to go blind,” he said.
“We have sufficient information to make decisions.”
Is Mexico right? that cases don’t matter? But how do you identify the asymptomatics - the most important person to identify?
JAPAN
Japan’s PM pushes his country’s Avigan drug as treatment for coronavirus despite no evidence it works and admitting it has side effects ‘the same as thalidomide’
Avigan is the brand name for favipiravir and has been used in flu outbreaks and the treatment of Ebola. Approved for use in Japan in 2014, favipiravir works by blocking the ability of a virus to replicate inside a cell.
However, it has been shown in animal studies to affect foetal development, meaning it is not given to pregnant women, and some doctors say they would not recommend it for children or adolescents.
And experts are increasingly concerned by Abe’s promotion of the drug. He has backed the drug to the tune of $130 million to treble an existing stockpile and has even offered to provide it to other countries for free...
...There are currently around five clinical trials ongoing in countries including the US, Italy and Japan, where Fujifilm announced it would be testing the drug’s efficacy on a group of 100 patients through until the end of June.