Clinical trials of drugs against Covid-19 have begun in hospitals in the United Kingdom, involving more than 8,000 patients. The trials, led by the University of Oxford and known as the RECOVERY trials, include five existing drugs, reports BBC medical correspondent Fergus Walsh. These include a combination drug used to treat AIDS and an antimalarial drug. The researchers want to see if these drugs can stop the coronavirus from replicating in the human body.
Drugs that reduce inflammation and suppress the immune system response, which can sometimes go haywire in severe disease (a so-called cytokine storm, a dangerously excessive immune response for the patient), are also being studied. Clinical trials are being conducted in nearly 170 hospitals in the United Kingdom and in more than 100 countries around the world. Their main goal is to select medicines that can reduce coronavirus mortality.
“The more patients we can enroll in these trials, the faster we will get results,” Professor Peter Horby, the principal investigator, told the BBC. “We’ve already broken a lot of records in terms of the size of this trial, it’s just incredible!” In fact, these clinical trials are already the largest in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday the start of global drug trials for Covid-19. More than 1200 volunteers have already been recruited for these trials.
“Taking part in these trials is unlikely to help me,” confessed 60-year-old Jeff Pike, a patient at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. He contracted the coronavirus six weeks ago, and before that he was diagnosed with cancer again. “But maybe this study will help someone else, because we can’t do without science today,” he says.
The number of coronavirus deaths in the U.K. has exceeded 26,000 after a decision was made to include not only hospital deaths but all deaths at home, including those in nursing homes, where the mortality rate was particularly high. According to Foreign Minister Dominik Raab, who stood in for the Prime Minister at the press briefing, there is no need to speak of an unexpected spike, as the total includes all COVID-19 deaths since March 2. At the same time, Raab emphasized that the country is going through a dangerous moment and that the peak of the disease has not yet passed.