‘Cheap’ steroid reduces virus deaths
Brits:
ATLANTA — As nations grapple with new outbreaks and spiking death tolls from the coronavirus, a commonly available drug appeared Tuesday to offer hope that the most seriously ill could have a better chance of survival.
The pandemic has forced countries to impose lockdowns and tough restrictions on daily life and travel, but infections have surged as they eased these rules and reopened their economies. With no vaccine available and much still unknown about the virus, researchers in England announced the first drug shown to save lives.
The drug, dexamethasone, reduced deaths by 35% in patients who needed treatment with breathing machines and by 20% in those only needing supplemental oxygen, researchers in England said. It did not appear to help less ill patients.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the drug was the “biggest breakthrough yet” in treating the coronavirus, and top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci called it “a significant improvement in the available therapeutic options that we have.”
Britain is making dexamethasone available to patients on the country's National Health Service. The U.K. Health Department said the drug had been approved to treat all hospitalized COVID-19 patients requiring oxygen. It said the U.K. had stockpiled enough to treat 200,000 patients. “It's on almost every pharmacy shelf in every hospital, it's available throughout the world, and it's very cheap,” said Peter Horby of Oxford University, one of the leaders of the trial that randomly assigned 2,104 patients to get the drug and compared them with 4,321 patients getting only usual care.
Since the virus first emerged in China late last year and spread around the globe,