IFNA1 and COVID-19: The interest of IFN was reinforced by a study carried out in Changsha, China where the administration by inhalation of Novaferon (an non-natural IFN, modified to gain affinity) in an open randomized trial conducted in 89 hospitalized COVID-19 patients led to a faster reduction of viral carriage than lopinavir alone (with a median viral carriage time from nine down to 6 days), and no transition to a severe disease form in the Novaferon group, as compared to 14% in the lopinavir group alone (Zheng et al., 2020).