Kintor Pharmaceutical Ltd of China says that after a three-week search it has found 588 COVID-19 patients that it needs for a clinical trial in Brazil of its treatment for the disease.

The company expects to collect next month the last of the data from the trial, according to a written statement Kintor issued on Monday.

The statement quotes Kintor Chairman Tong Youzhi as saying preliminary results indicate that treating patients in intensive care with a male hormone blocker, proxalutamide, reduces the death rate among them.

Kintor will soon start trials of the treatment in Brazil, China, the United States and elsewhere, the company statement quotes Mr Tong as saying.

Last July Kintor said the purpose of the trials was to confirm whether proxalutamide can reduce the rate of confinement in hospital of people infected by the COVID-19 virus, as suggested by research done at Soochow University in eastern China.