A week after the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Madagascar’s herbal tonic against COVID-19 called COVID Organics (CVO) was not a cure and they were waiting for ‘evidence,’ the herbal medicine has been taken to international scientists for testing.
Researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces are collaborating with a U.S. company, ArtemiLife, to test an extract from the plant Artemisia annua from which COVID Organics is extracted, to determine its effectiveness in speeding recovery from the virus.
“We are working with two independent laboratories to ensure the highest possible quality and exclude any bias in the results,” Peter Seeberger, the lead researcher said.
Seeberger is hopeful the first results will be back soon. “We have collected a significant body of data but are again repeating the work to make sure any results are reproducible multiple times
“Within the next couple of weeks, we will be in a position to speak with certainty to the activity of this class of compounds. Logical next steps will be human clinical trials, provided that we have a positive outcome of our current studies,” he said.
Several scientists in African countries, including South Africa and Senegal, are currently performing tests as well. The World Health Organization has also pledged to conduct a study into the plant’s effectiveness.
As tests are going on, Madagascar, the origin of this herbal medicine, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Comoros Islands, Tanzania, and Chad among others are already using CVO to treat their COVID-19 patients.