With all of the bad news lately I thought it’s worth highlighting that there is also some emerging good news.
Currently there is no really good, clinically demonstrated treatment to prevent COVID19 from becoming very seriously ill in patients where that’s the direction it’s headed. We have dexamethasone, but it only reduces the chance of death about 1/4 to 1/3 and only in certain very ill patients.
If this inhaled beta interferon treatment is anything close to 80% effective in preventing moderate disease from turning severe, then it could be a true game-changer. I am no doctor, but I believe that this, together with vaccination with say 15-20 million people (which should be complete by the summer), could be enough to allow us a return to normal social interaction by the summer: not only would it save lots of patients from getting severe illness, but on top of that it would help immensely with the capacity problems that hospitals are facing because people would need less intense treatment and they could go home much sooner.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55639096
Given that severe disease either resolves or fails to resolve within a matter of weeks, and given the high number of patients going into hospital with COVID19, I should expect this to be one of the fastest Phase 3 trials ever done, with swift recruitment and rapid visibility of the outcomes.