Potential cure catches attention of visiting Greek premier, who offers to test it in his country.
By David Isaac, World Israel News
“If you’re infected by corona and you’re seriously ill, you inhale this with a saline solution and you come out feeling good,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting Monday at his official residence with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Netanyahu was boasting about a new drug developed by Prof. Nadir Arber, director of the research project on developing an anti-coronavirus drug, with whom he had just met, together with Dr. Sharon Shapiro, director of the lab in which the drug is being tested, and Prof. Ronni Gamzu, director of Ichilov Hospital and former corona czar.
Israel’s Ichilov Hospital recently announced the results of initial trials of the drug, dubbed EXO-CD24. It cured 29 of 30 coronavirus patients, a 97% effectiveness rate.
While a number of vaccines now exist for Covid-19, an effective cure for patients already sick with the disease has not yet come on the market, with hospitals worldwide relying on a cocktail of drugs which show varying results.
EXO-CD24 could change all that.
Dr. Shapiro told i24News earlier, “Twenty nine out of 30 patients in moderate to severe condition were discharged from the hospital following three or five days of treatment.”
That the Greek prime minister happened to be in town on Monday turned out to be a serendipitous exchange.
Netanyahu told the press, “I asked Professor Arber to come to come to my office today. He did. Two hours later my friend Prime Minister Mitsotakis comes to my office and more or less the first question he asked me was, ‘Can you tell me about this miracle drug?'”
“We called Professor Arber and Prime Minister Mitsotakis volunteered that Greece, their leading hospital, would partake in the clinical trials, and I hope that we can approve this because I think this is an example of our cooperation in forging ahead to new areas,” Netanyahu said.
Mitsotakis said, “Assuming that we can overcome the regulatory hurdles, Greece would be happy to participate in clinical trials.”
“We would all be very relieved if we could find a drug that could cure the disease itself,” Mitsotakis said.
The Israeli and Greek tourism ministers also signed an agreement to allow people who have been vaccinated against the virus to visit without undergoing a quarantine period.
Mitsotakis said that Israel will be one of the first countries from which visitors will be allowed in “because you have been able to vaccinate a larger portion of the population and are moving at a faster pace.”