The Health Secretary Matt Hancock said during the daily Downing Street briefing that the UK are to launch worlds largest ever clinical trials in the fight against coronavirus.
Hancock told the nation, “These trials are looking at the effect of existing drugs and steroids repurposed for treatment of COVID-19. One of the trials, which is called ‘recovery’ which deals in hospital care, is the largest of its kind in the world with 926 patients enrolled.
“We have also set up an expert therapeutic task force to search for and shortlist other candidate medicines for trial.”
The Health Secretary added, “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.”
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said, much work has been going on “for weeks behind the scenes.”
Professor Tam said, “This is a new disease where at the moment we do not have any proven treatments. The UK is absolutely determined, however, to find effective treatments for this virus disease.
“Weeks ago, we began to look at clinical trials. We may not have publicised it at that point but a lot of work has been going on for weeks behind the scenes.
“Clinical trials are a gold standard way to discover if a treatment works or not, but saying whether it works or not is rather too simplistic.
“The treatment has to be effective, it also has to be safe and we also have to understand the right dosage to use, the right patients to give the treatment to and the right time in the illness to give that treatment.
“This is complicated stuff and the only way to unpick the signal and make sure we get it right is through clinical trials.”
Hancock thanked those across the UK who are staying at home.
Palliative care expert, Kathryn Mannix told the BBC that people with a severe case of coronavirus wil died very “quickly.”
To help the public cope, Mannix explained how to understand the “horrible distressing” process.
She told, BBC’s Coronavirus Newcast, “Knowing what to expect because the process itself, even if it’s happening quite quickly as it is with this lung inflammation from the coronavirus, is not something that is horribly uncomfortable or horribly distressing.”
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