Coronavirus drugs: Where we are and what we know

Medicines designed to treat COVID-19 won't be on pharmacy shelves for months or even years, but thousands of patients are in hospitals and health clinics now. So doctors are looking to drugs that are already approved for treating other diseases.

Malaria, HIV and arthritis wouldn't seem to have much in common with SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that has upended the world in just a few short months. But medicines developed for those ailments are showing some promise against the respiratory illness at the center of the pandemic.

Here's a closer look at some of the medicines being tested to see if they're effective against COVID-19.

CHLOROQUINE

This drug has been used to treat patients with malaria for nearly a century. It is a synthetic version of quinine, a natural compound that people have been extracting from the bark of cinchona trees since the early 1600s.