Early tests to detect the coronavirus were designed literally to do that: They detect the virus itself, identifying patients who harbor it. Those tests help with decisions about quarantines and treatment, but they have a key weakness. They don’t reveal whether a patient has already encountered the virus and then successfully recovered.

For a special episode of The World and Everything in It, WORLD medical correspondent Dr. Charles Horton answered questions from WORLD readers and listeners about the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s the conversation he had with host Mary Reichard, along with those questions and answers.

Regular readers will recognize your name. But tell us where you’re from and what life is like for you right now. 

Recently, the once-staid world of vaccine research has come to resemble a late-night TV huckster’s dream. From trusted medical organizations to biotech startups, various research teams are all but promising a vaccine against the novel coronavirus in the near future.

When vital medications are scarce, should doctors and medical workers get first dibs? A recent New York Times article highlighted state efforts to conserve the supply of drugs that could prove effective against the novel coronavirus—mainly hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug I wrote about last week.

On Thursday President Donald Trump in a press conference named two anti-malarial drugs he said the government was investigating as potential treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Their names are chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, and although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drugs specifically to treat the coronavirus, the agency has approved them to treat other ailments.

What are these drugs, and why use them on a patient with COVID-19?

The research world has mounted an electrifying response to the new coronavirus: Those playing a role include vaccine developers, drug researchers, gene sequencing labs, and the fields of public health and artificial intelligence. In the shadows of this effort is a less glamorous role—that of checking the archives of past research for clues to better treating and preventing COVID-19.

The doctor fed peanuts to a patient with a serious peanut allergy … 

That may sound like a teaser for a murder mystery or the opening statement in a malpractice lawsuit, but it’s actually a new treatment for food allergies. Oral immunotherapy, or OIT, works the way the ancient King Mithridates VI protected himself from poisons: The patient takes an almost undetectable amount of the harmful substance, then gradually larger doses, until the immune system becomes less sensitive to it. At least, that’s the theory.