CHINESE MEDICS SEE SUCCESS IN DRUGS ON TRIAL

Beijing, March 6: China has expanded and optimised the utilisation of drugs and therapies in the treatment of the novel coronavirus disease to block the conversion of mild cases to severe cases and save critically ill patients, health officials said.

Tocilizumab, with the common brand name Actemra, was included in China’s latest version of diagnosis and treatment guidelines on COVID-19, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Zhou Qi, deputy secretary-general and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said on Friday that the drug Tocilizumab has been found effective to block the inducement of the inflammatory storm.

In an initial clinical trial, Tocilizumab was used in 20 severe Covid19 cases. And the body temperatures of all the patients dropped within one day. Nineteen of the patients were discharged from the hospital within two weeks while one got better, Zhou was quoted as saying. Currently, the drug is under clinical trials in 14 hospitals in Wuhan, Zhou said.

Ever since the virus started spreading fiercely after it reportedly originated from a wild animal market in Wuhan in December last year, medical professionals in China and abroad are making frantic efforts to find a cure to treat thousands of patients while efforts are underway to produce a vaccine to halt it in its tracks. China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said on Friday that the death toll in the novel coronavirus outbreak has touched 3,042 with 30 new fatalities while the confirmed cases rose to 80,552 amid signs that the dreaded COVID-19 was stabilising, including in worstaffected Hubei.