¹Universidad Veracruzana/Centro de Investigaciones Cerebrales, Xalapa, Veracruz, México
²Centro Médico Cordobés, Córdoba, Veracruz, México
³Hospital Da Lapa, Porto, Portugal

^*Address for Correspondence: Aranda-Abreu GE, Universidad Veracruzana/Centro de Investigaciones Cerebrales, Xalapa, Veracruz, México; E-mail: garanda@uv.mx

Submission: 14 August 2020; Accepted: 17 September 2020; Published: 21 September 2020

Copyright: © 2020 Aranda-Abreu GE, et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the coronavirus SARS-Cov-2 has left more than 750,000 deaths worldwide, and efforts to develop a vaccine have been enormous. It has finally been announced that a vaccine will be available in December 2020. However, there is still a time gap where people continue to be infected by the coronavirus and deaths continue to advance.

Several therapies have been developed for the treatment of COVID-19. Initially, studies were done in which hydroxychloroquine along with azithromycin were assessed for their ability to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus in infected people. However, the treatment was not successful [1]. Studies were also undertaken with Ivermectin, but the studies were judged to be insufficient for it to be approved as a coronavirus antiviral [2,3]. Remdesivir was finally approved in the USA for severe SARS-Cov-2 infected patients [3].

In Mexico, we reported a case of a 57-year-old male with 10 years of type 2 diabetes mellitus and hypertension who presented with an infectious condition due to coronavirus. The first symptoms were a cold and muscle pain. He was prescribed paracetamol [500 mg every 6 h] and naproxen [550 mg/d for 5 days]. He continued with his usual diabetes medication consisting of 850 mg metformin/day. However due to a persistent cough 500 mg of azithromycin was added for 3 days, but symptoms continued until he tested positive for SARSCov- 2 by RT-PCR. His oxygen saturation levels were at 84%, so we developed a protocol to treat the patient as follows:

Amantadine 100 mg for 14 days in order to stop the replication of the coronavirus. 500 mg of aspirin were added daily for 5 days, to prevent clotting. Ipratropium/Salbutamol bromide [0.5, 2.5 mg/2.5 mL] was also added for nebulization. 3 Lpm of oxygen had to be added using a mask for 5 days then reduced to 1 Lpm. The patient began to recover after 6 days of treatment, his oxygen saturation levels began to increase and he stopped using oxygen [4]. After the 14 days of treatment the patient started to walk a little as he was still tired. Gradually he increased his walking, until today he walks 4 km daily. Figure 1 shows a chest X-ray taken 21 days after day 0 of COVID-19 infection and 14 days after completion of a 14 day treatment with amantadine at a dose of 100 mg every 12 hours. The X-ray shows good lung aeration and a small residual image of pneumonitis mainly in both middle lobes but with a pulse oximetry of 94% saturation Table 1.