Study background: HeberFERON accelerates SARS-CoV-2 clearance in COVID-19 cases. Considering this we evaluated the employment of HeberFERON in patients with more than 14 days of viral shedding.

Methods: This is a case series study of mild or moderate ill patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 from one hospital in Havana, Cuba. We evaluated the effect and safety of HeberFERON in patients previously treated with Heberon Apha R that resulted with prolonged viral shedding. All patients received lopinavir-ritonavir 200/50 mg every 12 h and chloroquine 250 mg every 12 h. The primary endpoint was the time to negativization of viral RNA in patients with persistent viral shedding. The protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Luis Diaz Soto Hospital.

Results: The characteristics of the individuals included the age ranged from 19-87 years with a mean of 40 years, (Study and Control I groups), while in the Control group II the mean age was 43.8 years. Leukocytes, platelets, neutrophils, and eosinophils, show a significantly lower counts in the groups with viral persistence.

Under IFN treatment the median viral shedding duration from diagnosis were 21 days and 19 days in Study group and Control group II, respectively. The Control group I showed a median viral shedding of 11 days (log-rank p = 0.000). Significant longer median viral negativization time (19 days) of symptomatic than asymptomatic patients (11 days, Long-rank p = 0.004), was observed. In patients under Heberon Alpha R treatment that resulted persistent for viral presence, the median time to viral negativization was 7 days for the period of administration of HeberFERON. Being symptomatic at diagnosis was significantly associated with viral persistence. The HeberFERON showed an adequate safety profile.

Conclusion: HeberFERON showed a safe and rapid negativization of patients with viral persistence, achieving negativization in more than 50% of patients in 7 days.