NEW YORK – Dr. Peter Michalos spoke about the testing of Avigan as a possible treatment for COVID-19 with John Catsimatidis on The Cats Roundtable radio show on WABC-770 AM in New York on June 14, Newsmax reported.

Dr. Michalos, who is also the Chairman of the Hamptons Health Society, told Catsimatidis that “there are clinical trials going on right now in Massachusetts, here in the United States,” Newsmax reported, adding that due to the Right to Try Act, “even if [Avigan] shows great results in Phase 2 before it's FDA approved, people will get the right to try the pill.”

Dr. Michalos told Catsimatidis that “Avigan has shown in trials of treating COVID-19 to cut the recovery time down from 11 days to just five,” and “it was developed in Japan many years ago for the flu and repurposed for Ebola a few years ago,” Newsmax reported.

“The Chinese began testing on it [on coronavirus patients and had some very exciting results. Now, the Germans are using it, and the Russian ministry of health approved it. That was pretty dramatic, that with an oral pill, instead of being sick for 11 days, people were only sick for five days,” Dr. Michalos said, Newsmax reported, adding that “the trimming of recovery time is important, because it is the rapid replication of COVID-19 in patients that renders acute cases that can require the use of ventilators and lead to death, according to Dr. Michalos.”

"Avigan is looking quite amazing," he added, noting that treatments with other drugs currently undergoing trials must be administered early on since later “the virus takes over the lungs and leads to the immune system destroying a patient from within,” Newsmax reported.

“The trick with a lot of these medicines is early intervention so the virus does not replicate. The problem is once it replicated and gets into the lungs and our immune system starts filling it up with fluid,” Dr. Michalos told Catsimatidis, Newsmax reported.