The World Health Organization (WHO) has hailed dexamethasone as a "lifesaving scientific breakthrough" to treat severely ill coronavirus patients. Initial clinical trial results in UK show dexamethasone, a steroid, can be lifesaving for patients who are critically ill with COVID-19. For patients on ventilators, the treatment was shown to reduce mortality by about one third, and for patients requiring only oxygen, mortality was cut by about one fifth, according to preliminary findings shared with WHO.
The results from the RECOVERY trial at the University of Oxford were “very significant,” but it was only one study, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s emergencies program, said during a press conference Wednesday at the agency’s Geneva headquarters. “We have to see the real data, the full data.”
“It’s important each country takes that measured approach as well,” he said. “This is not the time to rush, to change clinical practices. ...People still need training, we need to understand what doses to be used, how patients are going to be clinically assessed. We need to make sure there are going to be supplies of the drug, we need to look at a lot of things,” Mike Ryan declared.
