Its been seven months since the COVID-19 pandemic set foot in the world. There has been no cure for the vaccine and the clinical trials for some of the drugs tauted to be the possible leads proved futile. On Tuesday, scientists had a major breakthrough in finding a cure for the virus, when reports surfaced that they had discovered a powerful treatment that could cure the virus.
Dexamethasone, a drug used to fight inflammation in other diseases was said to have reduced death rates by around a third among the most severely ill COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals in trial results conducted in the UK. The full details of the results are yet to be published. Scientists now suggest that the drug should immediately become standard care in patients treated in hospital with the pandemic disease.
“This is a result that shows that if patients who have COVID-19 and are on ventilators or are on oxygen are given dexamethasone, it will save lives, and it will do so at a remarkably low cost,” said Martin Landray, an Oxford University professor who is co-leading the trial.
However, some scientists are exercising caution with this cure following the recent withdrawal of an influential COVID-19 drug that had been hyped by politicians and a few doctors. Hydroxychloroquine a drug that is used to cure Malaria was among those being tested for the cure of COVID-19 but was flagged down by the World Health Organization when it was discovered that it could not work the magic.
“We have been burned before, not just during the coronavirus pandemic but even pre-COVID, with exciting results that when we have access to the data are not as convincing,” said Dr Kathryn Hibbert, director of the medical intensive care unit at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital.
They now want the data published data to help them evaluate the findings.
