The Macrolide-Clarithromycin Project:
By middle of March 2020, we presented to the Argentine National Health Ministry our novel idea to treat COVID-19 infected patients with only a Macrolide, Clarithromycin, as a single agent. Also we proposed to use it for the prophylaxis of medical personnel largely exposed and at high risk. Even as a strategy to eradicate the virus from earth. In a way to rapidly make public this information and central idea: the use of clarithromycin as single agent for treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19 we made a video and a special page for internet as well as a short preliminary communication on a special-scientific site of the web (22)(23)(24). Until that date, in which we presented this project to our regulatory authorities, and according to the available scientific literature and published information, no other research medical group in the world had previously done or proposed a controlled clinical trial to test the pure antiviral efficacy of any macrolide for COVID-19, as a single agent, without the association of any other drug with it. Up to date we have not received any answer yet from our Ministry of Health in this direction and in this short period of time several other groups from different parts of the world started thinking in similar but not identical ideas.