No, there is still no cure for HIV. What there are, are two very effective treatments. One treats people who are infected by lowering their viral load to “undetectable by current methods of testing,” but not absent, because if the person stops taking the drugs, their viral load zooms to AIDS levels fast.
The second drug is a preventative, but while it is very effective, it does not work 100% of the time, and it is not without side effects. Also, for some reason, it does not seem to work well when the transmission is vaginally, so it is not effective for women with infected male partners.
The drug is called PrEP, and it’s a daily pill, which is prescribed only for people in high risk categories. They still are told to use barriers (condoms), but PrEP is very effective, because it has two chemicals in it: one interferes with the enzyme transcriptase, that allows HIV RNA to convert to DNA, and the other interferes with the ability of the RNA to replicate as RNA-- it “confuses” it, for lack of a better term, and its parts get put together wrong, so the first generation “born” in the potential host are not viable.
PrEP turns the person taking it into an extremely hostile host for HIV-- so hostile that HIV dies without infecting a single T-cell.
Well, like I said earlier, Tamiflu appears to work for COVID-19, but you have to catch it early. The problem is, that in the case of COVID-19, when symptoms have shown up, in most cases, it is too late for Tamiflu.
If we could test everyone we know has had contact with COVID-19+ people, and give Tamiflu to each one who tested positive, before any symptoms showed up, we could prevent lots and lots of illnesses.
So, we would want to simply test healthcare workers on something like a weekly basis, just as a matter of course, and test anyone living with someone who came up with the illness, plus anyone the person notified who chose to come in, like an office mate, the person’s dentist, barber, or tailor, or any other worker who did something that required closer than social distance, up to and including physical contact.
This means, of course, manufacturing and distributing lots and lots of tests, and lots and lots of Tamiflu.
It might even mean that we would need to pass some kind of law allowing people who could present a positive test to buy a single series of Tamiflu without a prescription. Then, we wouldn’t need a Doctor, NP, or PA to administer the test. RNs, LPNs, and even nursing assistants could be trained to administer it-- or maybe even home health aides. Those are credentials people have to earn, even if they don’t endow the holder with much, they still could give someone something to sign off on a positive test with (ie, “Jane Smith, HHA”), so you could look up Jane Smith in a database.
It would still have to be behind the counter, and the pharmacist would ahve to see the test before giving it out. If we started selling Tamiflu off the shelves, even if we limited it to one series per person, per two-week period, or something, it wouldn’t stay on the shelves, and pharmacies would have lines around the blocks, preventing people from getting their insulin and other necessary medicine in a timely manner.
Anyway, yeah, there are investigations into treatments happening.