Dexamethasone is the first drug to be shown to improve survival of Coronavirus.
And this week we’ve got some news on dexamethasone which as we’ve heard is a steroid drug it’s it’s an old drug some people would say it’s a very boring drug it’s been around for 60 odd years it’s very cheap it costs pounds and overseas cost pennies and so we closed their arm of the trial on monday the 8th of june because we had enrolled more than 2,000 patients
On dexamethasone and we compared them to 4,000 patients who had standard of care and what we saw was really quite remarkable so we’ve looked at different treatment groups and the drug has a different treatment effect in different treatment groups so in in ventilated patients with covered 19 the drug dexamethasone so 10 days of treatment with that which is a tablet
Or oral injection reduces the risk of death by about 35% in patients on the ward who require oxygen and have covered it reduces the risk of death by about 20% that covers about 75% of patients in the hospital who will receive a mortality benefit from using this drug there’s another group of patients who don’t require oxygen but have covered and we did not see a
Benefit in those patients so it’s not a drug that you would use in the community or in outpatients or in patients on the ward who didn’t have breathing difficulties but in patients with breathing difficulties who require oxygen or ventilation it really is showing quite a significant effect and it’s really important because the drug itself is very widely available
It’s on it almost every pharmacy shelf in every hospital it’s available throughout the world and it’s extremely cheap so we’ve looked at the numbers and if we treat eight patients in intensive care with this drug we’ll save one life and the total cost of treating all eight patients is only about 40 pounds so this is really really remarkable we’re extremely
Pleased with this result but i am proud of these british scientists backed by uk government funding who have led the first robust clinical trial anywhere in the world to find a coronavirus treatment proven to reduce the risk of death and i’m very grateful to the thousands of patients in this country who volunteered for the for the trials thank you this drug
Dexamethasone can now be made available across the nhs and we’ve taken steps to ensure we have enough supplies even in the event of a second peak i can let the house know that as of today we have two hundred and forty thousand doses now in stock and and the and on order and this means that the treatment is immediately available and already in use on the nhs i’m
Incredibly proud that this discoveries happened right here in britain through a collaboration between government the nhs and some of our top scientists you
Transcribed from video
What is Dexamethasone? | LBC By LBC
