Anything short of a successful human trial is ... nothing.
SARS-1 in 2003 even had animal trials, but no results in humans. (Covid-19 is SARS-2.)
The false hope of a vaccine or cure has caused some US governors to announce waiting for a vaccine before ending lockdown. 2022? What if that vaccine never comes? How do you base policy on mere hope?
RECOVERY just posted their preliminary results on dexamethasone. The NIAID trials showed efficacy of remedisivir. But getting a trial right can take some time. RECOVERY started in March, and had to enroll 10,000 patients or so.
A lot of trials are running at this point, it is a matter of collecting data and drawing conclusions. Antibody based therapies are probably the ones going to be the most effective, but I worry about the cost (they aren't cheap).
> The false hope of a vaccine or cure has caused some US governors to announce waiting for a vaccine before ending lockdown.
That is misguided as much as saying that there is no cure (yet). In fact, I'd say that most governments focused too much on vaccines and too little on pharmacological interventions.
FTR, for SARS, a lot of programs were halted because it fizzled out, and so it was impossible to actually test them. For MERS though, there were vaccines in development (and still are), and that's why most of the stakeholders were this fast in getting candidates ready.
"The first identified case occurred in 2012 in Saudi Arabia and most cases have occurred in the Arabian Peninsula.[2][7] About 2,500 cases have been reported as of January 2020.[4] About 35% of those who are diagnosed with the disease die from it.[2] Larger outbreaks have occurred in South Korea in 2015 and in Saudi Arabia in 2018"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndro...