A life-saving treatment for seriously-ill hospital patients with Covid-19 is being used across the UK from today, following breakthrough results in a UK trial, the BBC reports.
Dexamethasone – a cheap, widely-available steroid – was shown to reduce deaths among patients on ventilators and on oxygen.
The UK’s chief medical officers say it should be used “with immediate effect”.
And there are no issues with supplies of the medicine in the UK.
In an urgent letter from the UK’s four chief medical officers to clinicians in the NHS, they said dexamethasone had “a clear place in the management of hospitalised patients with Covid-19”.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the Commons that 240,000 doses of the drug are “in stock and on order”.
“It is not by any means a cure but it is the best news we have had,” he added.
The anti-inflammatory drug was tested as part of the world’s biggest trial of existing treatments to see if they could also work against coronavirus.
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%.
