A low cost mild steroid treatment Dexamethasone which is cheap and widely available is being used to treat severely-ill covid patients. Trials have been conducted for it and results were seen favorable. Dr Nick Cammak of Wellcome Trust explains the covid drug.
There’s also been a major breakthrough in the fight against covert 19 and the development of some sort of a drug in the united kingdom this is a low-cost mild steroid treatment dexamethasone which is cheap and also widely available it’s now being used to treat seriously ill cope with patients in trials led by a team from oxford university and on two thousand
Covert patients were given dexamethasone drug and the results were compared to more than four thousand who did not receive the drug for patients on ventilators it cut the risk of death from forty percent to twenty eight percent for patients needing oxygen it cut the risk of death from 25 percent to 20 percent and rajdeep sardesai earlier spoke to dr. nick hammock
Spokesperson off wellcome trust her on the buzz around this new drug joining me now is a very special guest i’m joined by dr. nick kamek he spokesperson wellcome trust and they’ve been looking at the entire issue of dexamethasone very closely there’s so much buzz’ doctor about the drug at the moment dr. carmack whether dexamethasone can be that first real life-saving
Drug for patients seriously ill with coronavirus do you see it as the path-breaking drug that’s being projected well you know crisis is a new virus for us and up to now nothing has been available to make any difference to patients lives we’ve seen that the information on remedies via which sort of improves the symptoms by a few days but dexamethasone today is the
First drug to be shown to be saving lives not all lives in the intensive care unit one out of eight patients on the ventilator their life will be saved by that so that’s a massive step for it’s not the answer but a massive step forward for the coronavirus treatment you’re calling it a massive step forward dr. gama there it says it cuts the risk of death by a third
For patients on ventilator and for those on oxygen by about a fifth do you see therefore it having a massive impact on those today who are ventilators on an icu yes so even even at that extent of benefit there for example in the uk that would have saved if we’d use dexamethasone from day one that would have saved up to five thousand lives so around the world you
Can imagine a huge number of lives will be saved using dexamethasone oh camon of course the question is can it be scaled up and if so how soon can it be scaled up we are told the united kingdom is now reported to have two hundred thousand course of the drug ready the big question is how soon can it be made available on a large scale across the world yeah so one
Great benefit of this medicine is it’s been around very long time it’s generic it’s off patent there are many manufacturers around the world and they of course will be able to scale this up and it and it could be made cheaply it’s a simple chemical so in that respect when we think about global access which of the wellcome trust is a priority for us we’re excited
That this drug has the potential to be made and scaled for use for individuals in the intensive care units around the world a final question there doctor because in india we have already approved lambda severe as a possible treatment now do you seem to believe that this particular drug will be even a step ahead of rem de severe i think this is absolutely a step
Ahead there there large number of patients in the recovery study that showed a real benefit from a mortality perspective which rendered severe hasn’t shown up to now so yes this is the first real big step forward for treatment but as i mentioned not not now for us all to stop trying to find further treatments and vaccines for this endemic in fact that was dr. my
Last question is this a step ahead in finding better drugs better medication and of course is the final row a goal still the vaccinations so therefore this is now part of the step by step approach to look for better drugs and better medication for coronavirus yeah so exactly that i think this is treating the inflammatory condition that is the biggest problem at
The later stages of the disease in the icu what we need are specific antivirals that will stop people ending up in the hospital in the first place that’s what we really need we want to be able to give people who start to have symptoms a specific antiviral that will kill off the virus and they won’t need to even go to hospitals that’s the ambition and we must not
Stop striving for that no gama thank you so much for joining us on that news that’s breaking across the world possible life-saving drug that’s been found for corvid 19 or could be found could be used for kovat 19 treatment for those on ventilators and in icus hi everyone 3 t 2 or 3 hope you like this video for latest news and analysis like and subscribe to the
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Transcribed from video
Coronavirus: Is Dexamethasone A Life-saving Covid Drug? Dr Nick Cammak Of Wellcome Trust Explains By India Today
