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Kriku kirjutas:Usutavasti ei ole taasnakatumine, aga kui selliselt "reaktiveerunud" viirust põdejad mingi aja pärast uuesti nakkusohtlikuks muutuvad, on see ka päris ebameeldiv

hjl85 kirjutas:Boriss Johnsoni seisund on märgatavalt halvenenud ja ta pandi intensiivi. Täpselt nagu arvasin kui tuli teade, et viidi kontrolli. Kahju. Loodetavasti ei satu ta olema esimene riigijuht, kes viirusele alla vannub.
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Taiwan, despite being just 100 miles from mainland China with regular flights to and from Wuhan, has successfully staved off the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. The country has so far seen five deaths and just under 350 confirmed cases, and most schools and businesses remain open. How did Taiwan do it?

At a hospital in Shenzhen, Zhang claimed Covid-19 patients treated with Favipiravir tested negative for the virus after a median of four days, rather than the 11 days it took for members of the study’s control group to test negative; in another study carried out in Wuhan, patients taking the drug allegedly recovered from fever nearly two days earlier than those who did not take the medication.

Favipiravir is not the only existing drug to be put forward as a potential Covid-19 treatment. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March showed that the HIV drug Kaletra failed to produce better results than standard care when administered to Covid-19 patients in Wuhan over a period of 14 days. Remdesivir, an experimental antiviral drug developed by biotech giant Gilead, is the subject of two clinical studies in China, which are supposed to yield results in late April. Meanwhile, a clinical trial is now underway in Italy, Spain, Germany, France, and elsewhere to test the efficacy of Kevzara, a rheumatoid arthritis treatment that some believe may calm an overactive immune response that in some Covid-19 patients can damage lung tissue even after much of the virus has passed from the body.

The severe Covid-19 trial enrolled 453 patients, and is expected to read out results first, perhaps as early as this week. The patients were allowed to enter the study up to 12 days from the onset of Covid-19 symptoms. Once enrolled, the patients were randomized in a double-blind fashion and were treated with daily infusions of remdesivir or a placebo for 10 days.

The primary goal is to show that the drug is better than placebo at improving symptoms within 28 days. That improvement is measured with a six-point scoring system ranging from hospital discharge (a score of 1) to death (a score of 6). In order to count as someone who responded to the drug, a patient must improve by at least two points. Patients can remain hospitalized at the end of the 28-day period of the clinical trial but still improve enough clinically — no longer needing intubation or supplemental oxygen, for example — to count as a responder.

If people who take the placebo show clinical improvement after 16 days, remdesivir would have to track at 13 days to demonstrate superiority with statistical significance, Raffat [Umer Raffat, a biotech analyst at Evercore ISI] said. This would be described in what researchers call a “hazard ratio.” The magic number would be 1.2, meaning that patients do 20% better on remdesivir than placebo.

There is already one red flag. The investigators running the severe Covid-19 study in China have already taken an interim look at the data, but they did not stop the study early. This suggests remdesivir isn’t working as well as hoped, and dampens optimism for an overall positive outcome, Raffat said.

It’s also possible the trial will produce mixed results. If the data from the remdesivir trials show the drug did not have clear benefits overall, experts will still look to see what kind of impact it had for patients who were treated early in the course of their illness. Remember, patients were allowed to enter the severe Covid-19 study even 12 days after they started showing symptoms.

Generally, antivirals are most effective if they are given soon after a person is infected. This allows them to slow the replication of the virus while it is still at low levels. If a treatment is given too late, and the virus has had a full chance to proliferate, it’s possible that the cascade of health consequences cannot be stopped.

So a key question for the remedesivir data will be if the timing of treatment had an impact on its performance.

As mentioned above, there is a second study of remdesivir underway in China that enrolled just over 300 patients with mild or moderate Covid-19. That study is also expected to read out results this month. The patients will be treated with remdesivir or a placebo for 10 days and then followed to determine how quickly they show signs of “clinical recovery” — defined as normal readings for fever, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation and alleviation of cough.

At least four additional clinical trials of remdesivir are underway, including two sponsored by Gilead, both of which are expected to read out in May. Another comes from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The World Health Organization is also running the “Solidarity” trial that is testing remdesivir as well as other drugs and drug combinations. So this is not the final word on remdesivir’s potential to fight Covid-19.

The Government will look for a refund for millions of coronavirus tests ordered from China after scientists found they were too unreliable to be used by the public.
Ministers will attempt to recoup taxpayers' money spent on the fingerprick tests after an Oxford University trial found they returned inaccurate results.
The failure is a significant setback because it had been hoped the antibody tests would show who had already built up immunity, therefore offering a swifter route out of lockdown.