{"id":258415,"date":"2020-06-17T23:58:06","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T03:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=258415"},"modified":"2020-06-17T23:59:01","modified_gmt":"2020-06-18T03:59:01","slug":"who-chief-hails-news-on-steroid-drug-to-treat-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/06\/17\/who-chief-hails-news-on-steroid-drug-to-treat-virus\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO chief hails news on steroid drug to treat virus"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a thrice-weekly webinar that the organization had on February 11, early on during the novel coronavirus breakout, convened a research and innovation forum. (File photo<\/a>: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

GENEVA<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 The chief of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday welcomed positive news from a trial in the United Kingdom on dexamethasone, a common steroid, which showed recovery in patients severely ill with coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).<\/p>\n

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a thrice-weekly webinar that the organization had on February 11, early on during the novel coronavirus breakout, convened a research and innovation forum.<\/p>\n

“Yesterday, there was the welcome news of positive initial results from the recovery trial in the United Kingdom. Dexamethasone, a common steroid, has been shown to have a beneficial effect on those patients severely ill with Covid-19,” Tedros said.<\/p>\n

Researchers in the UK announced on Tuesday that dexamethasone \u2013 a cheap and widely available drug \u2013 cuts the risk of death in severely ill coronavirus patients.<\/p>\n

“According to the early findings shared with WHO, for patients on oxygen alone, the treatment was shown to reduce mortality by about one-fifth,” he said.<\/p>\n

Tedros said for patients requiring a ventilator, mortality was reduced by about one-third.<\/p>\n

“This is very welcome news for those patients with severe illness. These drugs should only be used under close clinical supervision,” he said.<\/p>\n

Tedros noted that the drug is among therapeutics that can be used to tackle the virus, including those with milder symptoms.<\/p>\n

The WHO will update its clinical guidance to reflect how and when dexamethasone should be used to treat Covid-19.<\/p>\n

Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, said the news from the UK is “very significant” but the full data on the drug’s use still needs examination.<\/p>\n

“It is one of the many breakthroughs we’re going to need in order to deal with Covid-19 effectively, and we should be celebrating that today.
\nBut it’s still just preliminary data from one study,” Ryan said.<\/p>\n

The Johns Hopkins University in the United States has reported that there are more than 8.2 million cases of Covid-19 in the world, with more than 4 million recoveries and 445,000 deaths confirmed.<\/p>\n

The UK has recorded more than 300,000 cases and more than 42,000 deaths, the highest in Europe.\u00a0(Anadolu)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GENEVA\u00a0\u2013 The chief of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday welcomed positive news from a trial in the United …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":258416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-anadolu","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258415"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258421,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258415\/revisions\/258421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}