A number of clinical trials testing potential cures for coronavirus among New Zealand patients and potentially healthcare workers have just been announced.

Trials to find potential treatments for coronavirus, including giving frontline healthcare workers and those with coronavirus anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, are being launched in New Zealand.

The Medical Research Institute of New Zealand will lead three clinical trials testing a variety of drugs which have gained attention for their potential use in the coronavirus crisis, it was announced on Friday.

The Health Research Council (HRC) and Ministry of Health have awarded more than $3.8 million to Covid-19 research in the fields of health and social science, following an urgent funding call issued by the agencies last month.

The trials are among 13 government-funded studies to help combat the current coronavirus outbreak, and prepare New Zealand for future infectious diseases.

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Two of the three trials are already under way, including one involving between 4000 and 6000 patients admitted to intensive care units worldwide with Covid-19-related pneumonia.

Researchers would test the efficacy of drugs such as lopinavir-ritonavir (currently used to treat HIV) and hydroxychloroquine - used to treat auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus - in critically ill coronavirus patients.

Hydroxychloroquine has garnered media attention during the Covid-19 outbreak, in large part due to US President Donald Trump repeatedly pushing the drug despite a lack of evidence of its benefits.

MARK MORAN/AP Hydroxychloroquine is a drug used to treat and prevent malaria, as well as auto-immune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. President Trump has repeatedly touted it as a "game changer" without good clinical studies backing that up.

Ten New Zealand ICUs are involved in the study, led by MRINZ and a team in Melbourne.

Senior intensive care specialist at Auckland City Hospital and trial lead Dr Colin McArthur said it would allow the sickest patients to access the best treatment currently available.

"It will be reassuring for New Zealand Covid-19 patients to know we are part of this trial and that they'll get treated with what is more likely to be effective, with less time wasted on things that aren't".

McArthur said they would be able to evaluate several treatments at the same time, in the same patient - dropping or picking up other treatments over time if need be.

SUBZERO IMAGES Dr Richard Beasley, the director of the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, is leading one of three clinical trials funded by the Health Research Council.

The study is an extension to a wider international study (REMAP-CAP) which has been recruiting patients with severe community-acquired pneumonia (the main cause of death from Covid-19) for the past three years.

Another similar clinical trial, led by Middlemore Hospital clinical microbiologist and infectious diseases physician Dr Susan Morpeth would test the use of those same anti-virals in people unwell enough to need hospital admission, but not intensive care support.

This study would be carried out across New Zealand and Australia to see which treatment - or combination of treatments - would reduce the risk of death or the need of ventilator support among Covid-19 patients.

The second trial - which began just this week - will see patients in the community who have tested positive for Covid-19, but do not require hospital treatment, also given hydroxychloroquine.

​The study would compare the efficacy of the drug against Covid-19, looking at 70 volunteer patients from Auckland and Wellington.

Patients would be given either the drug or a placebo, and have their symptoms monitored for 28 days.

Trial lead Professor Richard Beasley - director of MRINZ - said the study was significant as medications may be more likely to be effective when given in the early stages of the disease.

SUPPLIED/WAITEMATA DISTRICT HEALTH BOARD. Researchers believe focussing attention on finding medicines that work in the treatment or prevention of Covid-19 could ease pressure on hospital admissions. It comes as hospitals set aside entire buildings for coronavirus patients.

If hydroxychloroquine was found to be effective, it could reduce the burden of Covid-19 admissions on the hospital system, he said.

The drug could also be used as a potential preventative treatment among healthcare workers, in a third trial.

This had not yet started, but would if the number of Covid-19 cases in New Zealand increased over the next few months.

Lead investigator and Wellington Hospital ICU specialist Dr Paul Young said the trial would involve a range of frontline workers.

Young said Italy had seen Covid-19 "completely overwhelm" the healthcare system – stressing how important it was for countries to have frontline health workers "fit and able to meet demand".

"Once infected, not only are healthcare workers off work and their colleagues also forced into self-isolation, but they may have transmitted the virus to vulnerable patients in their care before becoming symptomatic," he said.

The study would assess the potential efficacy of a "simple, oral, safe and low cost" weekly prophylactic for this high-risk group.

It is believed to be the first such trial registered worldwide.

HRC chief executive Professor Sunny Collings said New Zealand was "well-placed, well-resourced and highly capable" of contributing to the evidence needed to inform future treatments for Covid-19.

Other studies would look at inequities and stigmatisation in the Covid-19 response, and how the economy of the Pacific Islands may be impacted by the pandemic.