Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 18) – A former official of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone has not been proven to cure COVID-19.
Former U.S. FDA associate commissioner Peter Pitts stressed that dexamethasone is commonly used as a treatment for patients with respiratory and lung inflammation issues and those who are in ventilator support.
“It is not a game changer for everybody but certainly it is a step forward in treating those most ill,” Pitts told CNN Philippines’ Rico Hizon in an interview with The Final Word newscast.
Pitts likened the use of dexamethasone to remdesivir, a drug also rumored to cure COVID-19 but is only meant to also treat severely ill coronavirus patients in the hospital.
The same goes with anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as an effective cure for COVID-19.
“The FDFA has gathered a great deal of data that shows that using hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 can cause a lot of very serious medical problems,” Pitts said. “However, it does not mean that it can’t be used by doctors at their discretion for patients that are suffering from substantial consequences of the virus in a hospital.”
The medical professor also explained that despite the steroid’s function for treating lung inflammation problems, which is one of the obvious symptoms of COVID-19, people must not trust its usage for now since medical studies are underway to find out if it can really kill the virus.
“A lot of research began to think whether these steroids can be used for the virus and indeed dexamethasone can according to the Oxford research,” said Pitts.
Researchers of the Recovery Trial, a large United Kingdom-based trial investigating potential COVID-19 treatments, said on Tuesday that a low-dose regimen of dexamethasone for 10 days was found to reduce the risk of death by a third among hospitalized patients requiring ventilation.
READ: Steroid reduces risk of dying in sickest coronavirus patients, preliminary study results suggest
When asked if a vaccine for COVID-19 is possible this year, Pitts said it will most likely be available in early 2021 due to the complexities of vaccine development and manufacturing.
“Vaccine development is very hard,” he noted. “Manufacturing the vaccine is equally difficult. It becomes difficult to figure out how you manufacture them to scale for billions of people around the world”
He explained the usual timetable for vaccine creation is five years. But due to the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, medical experts are expediting but not rushing the vaccine, he said.
“We have to be smart and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Pitts said.
In the Philippines, the Department of Health reminded the public on Wednesday to be cautious in interpreting the preliminary study findings that steroid drug dexamethasone can reduce the risk of the sickest patients dying from COVID-19.
READ: DOH reminds public: Steroid not a ‘magic pill’ for COVID-19
According to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, there are now 8,384,043 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the world. Some 449,695 persons died and 4,102,111 recovered due to the virus.
The country now has confirmed 27,799 infections, along with 1,116 deaths and 7,090 recoveries.
