According to statements by the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, dexamethasone has proven to be the only drug that has been shown to be effective against the severe form of Covid-19.
Ghebreyesus recalled that six months ago the WHO launched the Solidarity Trial – the world’s largest randomized controlled test of Covid-19 therapeutics that involves almost 13,000 patients in 500 hospitals in 30 countries – to evaluate the effectiveness of four drugs for the treatment of this disease.
In June, the WHO announced the suspension of the hydroxychloroquine group, and in July it did the same with the combination of lopinavir and ritonavir. Now, the provisional results have also shown that the other two drugs, remdesivir and interferon, have “little or no effect” in preventing death from Covid-19 or reducing hospitalization time, said the head of the international body of the UN, while it specified that the trial is still recruiting about 2,000 patients each month and that it will evaluate other treatments, including monoclonal antibodies and new antivirals.
“At the moment, the corticosteroid dexamethasone remains the only therapeutic treatment that has been shown to be effective against covid-19 in patients with severe disease,” Ghebreyesus stressed, although there are still “many other” ongoing trials of identified therapies through the Covid-19 Research and Development Roadmap.