Respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan's latest views on COVID-19

Are there any effective drugs to treat COVID-19?

The first large-scale clinical efficacy study of remdesivir, published in the New England Journal of Medicine not long ago, found that the drug was effective in severe cases with a response of 68 percent, so we can say it's rather effective.

China has also made great attempts, and found that the effect of Kaletra (a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir) is not that obvious, but chloroquine phosphate is proved effective.

Will patients who are discharged from the hospital after initial recovery but test positive again infect others?

They are less likely to cause infection.

Among the patients who have been clinically cured, a small number of them have tested positive for a second time. We need to do some tests on them, like the detection of antibodies in the serum, which is commonly known as IgG. But even if the nucleic acid test is positive, the patients themselves would not be infected. It's like when you have the flu, you will not get the flu for a long time because you have antibodies.