Nea Kifissia (Greece) (AFP)

Far from the controversy which agitates the scientific community in the world, Greece resumed the production of chloroquine in full pandemic and continues its clinical trials according to a "calm and distant approach".

In front of the flashing green lights of a capsule-making machine, Evangelia Sakellariou, chemist in a Greek laboratory, was one of the first scientists to control the quality of the chloroquine tablets used in hospitals in the country.

His company Uni-Pharma, located in Nea Kifissia, in the northern suburbs of Athens, was able to reactivate in time an old license to manufacture this controversial drug, which in the 1990s was exported to Africa for the treatment of malaria.

"The situation was urgent in March" and "the company had the reflex to ask the National Medicines Agency (EOF) to reactivate this old license a few days before the confinement and closing of the Greek borders," the official said. 'AFP Spyros Kintzios, development director of Uni-Pharma.

In the process, five tonnes of raw material were imported from India and the laboratory went "on high alert", remembers Evangelia Sakellariou.

"The weekend of March 21, we worked constantly, we were under pressure and in 30 hours we produced 24 million doses, then offered to the Greek national health system," she said.

"When I saw the first tablets, I felt relieved and happy to have made this effort for a good cause," she continues.

Greece then had only six dead and 464 people infected with the new coronavirus. The country has remained one of the most spared from the Covid-19 compared to its European partners, with 182 dead and nearly 3,000 cases so far.

In a context of international competition, "the resumption of chloroquine production in Greece has had a positive effect on local industry whose exports have been increasing in recent years", notes Markos Ollandezos, president of the Panhellenic Union of the 'pharmaceutical industry.

The Greek industry is mainly specialized in the manufacture of generics and certain drugs of common use.

- "Calm and distant approach" -

The media coverage of the chloroquine debate in France and in other countries, as well as the global controversy arising from the publication of a study by the journal The Lancet, have had little impact on the Greek scientific community.

According to epidemiologists in the country, chloroquine is considered effective especially in the early stages of the disease and has been administered in combination with azithromycin to hospitalized patients.

And the fact that the coronavirus caused few deaths in Greece "has not fueled the treatment debate," says Markos Ollandezos.

The Medical University of Athens started a study in April on "the action of chloroquine phosphate on patients infected with SARS-CoV-2".

"The public, scientists and authorities have maintained a calm and distant approach to the controversy. The idea is to wait and see the results of the studies," said Spyros Kintzios.

The retraction on June 4 of three of the four authors of the Lancet study and the about-face of the World Health Organization, which now allows the resumption of clinical trials on hydroxychlorine after a brief suspension, has caused a shock wave in world public opinion and the scientific community.

However, the manufacture of chloroquine or its derivative hydroxychloroquine continues in many countries in Europe.

The French company Sanofi produces hydroxychloroquine sulfate at a site in Hungary. As for the drug itself, plaquenil, it is manufactured at two large production sites in Spain and France.

Plaquenil is imported into several countries where hydroxychloroquine is not produced, such as Greece, Poland or Estonia.

In Bulgaria, chloroquine from the Bul Bio public laboratory is used to treat Covid-19 patients.

Considered a large producer of chloroquine, Poland authorizes its use if necessary. It is the company Adamed, which produces it under the name of Arechin.

Asked by AFP, a spokesman for the Hungarian government stressed that the drug was not administered to new patients but only to those who have already started treatment.

burx-hec / chv / cn

© 2020 AFP