LONDON (UK) – Britain announced that it was launching the biggest clinical trial of possible coronavirus treatments in the world.
A leading health official cautioned that the results were mostly a few months away.
1,000 patients from 132 hospitals are recruited within 15 days with thousands more expected to join in the upcoming weeks, according to the health department.
Medicines which are more commonly used to treat malaria and HIV are being tested in the trails. It is designed such that when further medicines are identified, they can be added to the study in days.
Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer said the next round of clinical trials should have new medicines, like those in development for other diseases with “a role to play”.
He was cautious on the trial’s result timeline
“I know that there’ll be a question about when are we going to get some results from these clinical trials, and my straight answer to you is: ‘I don’t know.’ I think it’s going to be a few months.”
– Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer
Matt Hancock, British Health Minister stated that until COVID-19 possible treatments are shown to effective, staying home is the only protection.
The clinical trials so far have focused on repurposing drugs and steroids already in existence to treat COVID-19.
“We’ve also set up an expert therapeutics taskforce to search for and shortlist other candidate medicines for trials. We need more patients to volunteer to be part of these trials because the bigger the trials, the better the data and the faster we can roll out the treatments, if – and only if -it’s proven to work.”
– Matt Hancock, British Health Minister
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field.