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This Is Where We're At With Treatments For Covid-19 Right Now
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With a vaccine not looking likely this side of Christmas, scientists and health experts are scrabbling to find existing drugs that can help fight against the worst effects of Covid-19.
The Recovery trial in the UK has already unearthed one game-changing drug, dexamethasone, and has crossed two other treatments off the list after they didn’t show any clinical benefits. The first is hydroxychloroquine, the drug fiercely advocated for by Donald Trump despite studies showing it’s not effective; the other is lopinavir-ritonavir, a drug commonly used to treat HIV.
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More than 11,500 Covid-19 patients from over 175 NHS hospitals in the UK have been enrolled on the trial with a view to finding treatments that reduce deaths and the need for mechanical ventilation.
Here’s what you need to know about the drugs currently being tested, as well as those already in use for treating the virus.
Remdesivir
What is it?Remdesivir is an antiviral drug that was originally developed to treat ebola but was dropped from trials after other drugs were found to be more effective.
What’s the deal? The experimental drug, produced by US pharmaceutical company Gilead, was revived as a potential treatment for coronavirus after animal trials showed it had some impact fighting other strains of coronavirus: MERs and SARs.
The aim of antiviral drugs is to directly target a virus (such as Covid-19) and either kill it or prevent it from spreading.
The drug is being trialled worldwide with data suggesting it can shorten recovery time by approximately four days in hospitalised patients. Results have also shown a small trend toward better survival rates for the drug – 8% of patients given remdesivir died,...
