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photo : BBC

A cheap and widely available drug can help save the lives of patients seriously ill with coronavirus. The low-dose steroid treatment dexamethasone is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus, UK experts say. The drug is part of the world's biggest trial testing existing treatmentsto see if they also work for coronavirus. It 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 had been used to treat patients in the UK from the start of the pandemic, up to 5,000 lives could have been saved. During a press conference held on Tuesday (16/06/20), UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated his pride on UK research team that has found the effective drug to reduce death on covid-19 patients.

"I’m proud of these British scientist backed by UK government funding who let the first rebus clinical trial anywhere in the world to find a coronavirus treatment proven to reduce the risk of death. And I’m very great full to the thousands of patients in this country who volunteered to the trial, thank you. This drugs dexamethasone can now be made available across the NHS and we’ve taken steps to ensured that we have enough supply even on the event of a second peak" Prime Ministr Johnson said. 

The UK government has 200,000 courses of the drug in its stockpile and says the NHS will make dexamethasone available to patients. About 19 out of 20 patients with coronavirus recover without being admitted to hospital. The drug is already used to reduce inflammation in a range of other conditions, including arthritis, asthma and some skin conditions. Peter Horby, professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health at the University of Oxford said that the drug give extraordinary effect on the patients with ventilators.

"So in ventilated patients with covid-19 the drug dexamethasone so 10 days of treatment without using a tablet or injection reduce the risk of death by 35 percent. In patients on the ward who required oxygen and have covid, it reduces the risk of death by 20 percent. That covers 75 percent of patients in the hospitals who save mortality benefit from using this drugs. There’s another group of patients who don’t require oxygen but have covid and we do not see a benefit in those patients so it’s not a drug that you use in the community or in patients with no breathing difficulties. But in patients with breathing difficulties who require oxygen or ventilators it realy showing a quite significant effect" Professor Horby explain. 

Professor Horby added that this is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality - and it reduces it significantly. It's a major breakthrough. The Recovery Trial, running since March, also looked at the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which has subsequently been ditched amid concerns it increases fatalities and heart problems. The antiviral drug remdesivir, meanwhile, which appears to shorten recovery time for people with coronavirus, is already being made available on the United Kingdom National Health Service//NK