First steroid drug hailed as major breakthrough in Covid-19 treatment

LONDON: Britain will immediately start giving dexamethasone to coronavirus patients, after a trial showed the steroid saved the lives of one third of the gravest cases, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Tuesday.

Hancock said Britain began stockpiling the widely available drug when its potential first became apparent three months ago."So we now have 200,000 courses that are ready to go and we´re working with the NHS (National Health Service) so that the NHS standard treatment for COVID-19 will include dexamethasone form this afternoon," Hancock said.

Researchers led by a team from the University of Oxford administered thewidely available drug to more than 2,000 severely ill COVID-19 patients. Among those who could only breathe with the help of a ventilator, dexamethasone reduced deaths by 35 percent, and by one-fifth in other patients receiving oxygen only, according to preliminary results.

Normally used to treat a range of allergic reactions as well as rheumatoid arthritis and asthma, dexamethasone is an anti-inflammatory. Daily doses of the steroid could prevent one in eight ventilated patient deaths and save one out of every 25 patients requiring oxygen alone, the team said. The trial included a control group of 4,000 patients who did not receive the treatment.

The trial showed dexamethasone to be ineffective in treating patients with milder forms of COVID-19, however. A number of existing drugs have been trialled as a treatment against the novel coronavirus, with mixed results.