Dexamethasone, a cheap, generic, and widely available steroid, is being assumed the first drug that is highly effective in saving the lives of critical COVID-19 patients.
The University of Oxford-led research team, have found that dexamethasone reduces deaths by up to at least one third in severely-ill hospitalized patients.
Researchers calculated that the drug cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators and by a fifth for those in oxygen.
National along with International media is going abuzz as experts have arrived in the findings that this 'low-dose' steroid is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus. In a conversation with an Indian media house, India Today, Dr. Nick Cammack, spokesperson of Wellcome - British health charity says that 'dexamethasone has the potential to save lots of thousands of lives'.

"Coronavirus may be a new virus and up to now, nothing has been available to form a difference to the patients' lives. we've seen information on remdesivir that it improves the symptoms for a couple of days, but dexamethasone is that the first drug to be shown to be saving lives," Dr. Nick Cammack was quoted as saying.

Researchers claim in an International media claim that had it been used to treat patients in the UK from the very beginning of the pandemic, 'up to 5,000 lives could have been saved'.
"So, around the world, you'll imagine an enormous number of lives are going to be saved by the utilization of dexamethasone," Dr. Cammack said to the media house.
According to the UK-based expert, a serious advantage of dexamethasone is that it's cheap, generic, and available across the world.
He further says that one great advantage of this drug is that it's off-patent. "There are many manufacturers around the world and that they are going to be ready to scale this up. It's made cheap. So once we believe global access, this drug has the potential to be made to be employed by individuals within the medical care units across the planet," Dr. Cammack says.
When compared with remdesivir - a drug that has already been approved by the Indian government to be administered on COVID-19 patients, Dr. Cammack said, "A sizable amount of patients [being administered with dexamethasone] showed benefits from a mortality perspective, which remdesivir hasn't shown yet."
Dr. Cammack, however, said that dexamethasone may be a step in the right direction and not a sign to prevent further research to seek out drugs or vaccines to treat COVID-19.
"Dexamethasone treats the inflammatory condition which is the biggest problem within the later stages of the disease within the ICU. What we'd like are specific anti-virals which will stop people from ending up at the hospital within the first place. These anti-virals are going to be administered when people will start showing symptoms in order that the virus is killed off and don't need to attend the hospital," Dr Cammack says.