World attention is focused on the low-dose steroid treatment, dexamethasone, which is being regarded as a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus.
This comes as China grapples with the implications and challenges of a new outbreak in the capital, Beijing, and the global pandemic reaches more than 8 million infections, claiming over 435 100 lives.
Al Jazeera reports that one of China’s top disease experts says the next 36 hours will be crucial in predicting the effect of a new coronavirus outbreak in the capital.
Some neighbourhoods in Beijing were put back into lockdown on Sunday after more than 100 new infections were confirmed. The city had gone more than 50 days without any reported cases.
But some hope is being pinned on a new drug, which the BBC described as ‘cheap and widely available’ and judged to be capable of helping to save the lives of patients seriously ill with coronavirus.
The globally available steroid treatment, dexamethasone, considered a ‘major breakthrough’ in the fight against the deadly virus, according to experts in Britain, is part of the world’s biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus.
The report said the drug cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators. For those on oxygen, it cut deaths by a fifth.
Had the drug – which one report described as ‘cheaps as chips’ – been used to treat patients in the UK from the start of the pandemic, up to 5 000 lives could have been saved, researchers say.
The BBC report quoted Prime Minister Boris Johnson as saying there was a genuine case to celebrate ‘a remarkable British scientific achievement’.
Chief Medical Officer for England Prof Chris Whitty said it would save lives around the world.
The report said: ‘About 19 out of 20 patients with coronavirus recover without being admitted to hospital. Of those who are admitted, most also recover but some may need oxygen or mechanical ventilation. And these are the high-risk patients dexamethasone appears to help.
‘The drug is already used to reduce inflammation in a range of other conditions, including arthritis, asthma and skin some conditions. And it appears to help stop some of the damage that can happen when the body’s immune system goes into overdrive as it tries to fight off coronavirus. This over-reaction, a cytokine storm, can be deadly.’
The report said that in the trial, led by a team from Oxford University, about 2 000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and compared with more than 4 000 who were not.
For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.
Ten days of dexamethasone treatment costs about £5 per patient.
In other virus-related news
- AFP reported that more than 8 million cases of novel coronavirus had been confirmed worldwide, with more than half in the United States and Europe. There had been more than 435 100 deaths, mostly in Europe. Europe has 2 417 902 cases with 188 085 deaths. The US has 2 110 182 cases and 116 081 deaths. It said the number of confirmed cases had doubled since 10 May and another one million new cases had been detected in the last eight days;
- On Monday, deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean passed 80 000, more than half in Brazil, as the virus accelerated across the region. Since the disease first spread in Latin America in March, a total of 80 505 deaths have been recorded, of which 43 959 occurred in Brazil, the country with the second highest fatalities after the US;
- The US recorded less than 400 coronavirus-related deaths in 24 hours for the second day in a row, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. There were 385 new deaths at 00:30 on Tuesday, the tracker run by the Baltimore-based university showed, after a 24-hour toll of 382 the day before. This was the lowest daily death toll since the end of March; and
- The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the new cluster of infections in Beijing was a cause for concern, given the Chinese capital’s size and connectivity. ‘A cluster like this is a concern and it needs to be investigated and controlled – and that is exactly what the Chinese authorities are doing,’ said WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan.