- According to early findings shared with WHO, for patients on oxygen alone, dexamethasone treatment was shown to reduce mortality by about one-fifth, said a top official
- While cases are ‘still rapidly rising’ in many regions of the world, there are ‘green shoots of hope’, said WHO’s Director General
Director-General of the World Health Organisation on Wednesday said “there are green shoots of hope” in fight against coronavirus.
“The world has now recorded more than 8 million cases of Covid-19. In the first two months, 85,000 cases were reported. In the past two months, six million cases have been reported,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
He said that there have been more than 435,000 deaths and that in the Americas, Africa and South Asia, Covid-19 cases are still rapidly rising. “However, there are green shoots of hope, which show that together through global solidarity, humanity can overcome this pandemic,” he said.
He also spoke about two researchers in the UK finding steroid drug dexamethasone helpful in treating the critical patients dependent on ventilators or oxygen. Trial results announced on Tuesday by researchers in Britain showed dexamethasone, used since the 1960s to reduce inflammation in diseases such as arthritis, cut death rates by around a third among the most severely ill Covid-19 patients admitted to hospital.
“Dexamethasone, a common steroid, has been shown to have beneficial effect on patients severely ill with Covid-19. According to early findings shared with WHO, for patients on oxygen alone, dexamethasone treatment was shown to reduce mortality by about one-fifth,” Tedros said.
For patients requiring a ventilator, mortality was reduced by about one-third, he further said.
However, the head of the World Health Organizations’s emergencies programme said on Wednesday said it is important to reserve use of the steroid dexamethasone for the treatment only of serious cases of Covid-19, for which it has been shown to have a benefit.
“It’s exceptionally important in these cases that the drug is reserved for severely ill and critical patients who can benefit from this clearly,” Mike Ryan told a briefing.
Britain has increased the amount of dexamethasone it has in stock and on order to 240,000 doses, health minister Matt Hancock said on Wednesday, after a preliminary trial result showed it reduced mortality in the most severe Covid-19 cases.
Britain swiftly backed the steroid drug after University of Oxford researchers announced preliminary results of their trial on Tuesday, saying it had amassed a stockpile of 200,000 courses of the drug.
“It’s the first time that anyone in the world has clinically proven that a drug can improve the survival chances of the most seriously ill coronavirus patients,” Hancock told parliament.
With inputs from agencies
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