COVID- 19 Vaccine update: Drugs research:Will we get a cure for COVID-19?

 

Which drugs help against covid19?

It's the top goal for medical researchers around the world we have already developed several effective vaccines but a cure has not yet been found why is it so difficult so far doctors have tried drugs that have already been used for other viral diseases like HIV ebola sars and influenza. Sometimes they can help but they are not the breakthrough medical experts are hoping for what we do know is that how well a drug works depends above all on when it is administered in the early stage when the virus enters the body and multiplies or a later phase when the body reacts with inflammation and immune defenses it is problematic

because if you have a patient you don't really know what to do and everybody tries the best and they observe the patient and they observe the symptoms but there is no standard recommendation so far hospitals around the world are gaining

experience with covet 19 and they're gathering data in the hope that it'll soon be possible to do more

than just protect healthy people with a vaccination hello and welcome to your covet 19 special i'm chris colbert in berlin vaccination programs around the world are the strongest defense against the spread of the coronavirus but treating patients who have fallen ill has been a lot more challenging some doctors have used existing drugs against covet 19 but the medical evidence of effectiveness is often lacking another possibility is to use antibodies Jaban's two guy pharmaceuticals has applied for regulatory approval of a coronavirus treatment that combines two antibodies it follows trials in Japan earlier I spoke to clemens ventna head of the shebing clinic in munich and before we talked about the current treatment of covet 19 cases i asked him what it was like handling germany's first coronavirus patient almost one and a half years ago actually patient zero was without any excitement so we just did what any doctor would have done so the patient got a little bit oxygen uh a little bit inhalation not even a real infusion so at this moment we just used supportive care in the best sense but did not treat this patient in a specific way actually the the disease weaned off by itself after a couple of weeks and looking at how you treat patients today with covet 19 infections how has it changed i think we have made some progress um based on clinical trials we also participated so the one thing is in the early phase of the covet 19 disease you can interact by using drugs like rendezvir but we also have the neutralizing antibodies so spike directed antibodies like the famous dragon cough ii donald trump got it and in the later phase of the disease so second week and further on the principle is to suppress the inflammation. 

So that's the reason or that's actually the the prime time for steroids the prime time for uh i had six antibodies tosilitzumab for example and there are new developments like gmc's half antibodies etc etc so you see the armamentarium is broadened and but still some homework to be done not the cure for every patient at this point now on that antibody treatment a company in Japan says it applied for regulatory approval for an antibody treatment for Covid19 is this approach the most promising one.

I think in pandemic times you have to react in a very tiny and quick manner so. I think the approach that has been used in Germany but also in the us was more efficient so we have access to these antibodies without an official label because this will take months and sometimes also years so you but you don't have time to wait so we are just using these antibodies and without label we tell patients about this but we have some data from trials that they can even reduce mortality so that's that's reason enough for us to apply these new drugs now covet patients

have been treated with drugs for other

viral diseases what can we draw from that actually we also did this in the first

few weeks so typically hiv drugs etc um i mean that's a trial and error in the first days of of this pandemic time but actually we discarded these drugs because we learned very quickly that they have more side effects than effects and when you're as trained as a physician also participating clinic trials you know what you have to do and 

so this is also the story here you know that we didn't use HIV drugs anymore but sometimes you just take the stuff that's at the bench if you don't have a lot of things to offer and this is how it happened also in this pandemic

now if the side effects outweigh the

actual benefits how far along are we then when it comes to developing a medical cure for covet 19. 

I mean cure is a big word for covet 19. i think we we can help patients in a very early phase of the disease the problem is when the patient comes to the emergency room after two or three

weeks after symptom onset so these are the real heavy cases and sometimes even we are not able to help young people.

 I think still a long path to go we have

learned a lot of things about vaccination but the medical treatment

is still let's put it this way under

development and we and others we are actively participating for this reason in

clinical trials using new drugs for this

disease meanwhile fewer very old patients are being hospitalized how does that change the work of the doctors working in the hospitals in the second and third wave of the pandemic we had a lot of elderly patients in our hospital. so the point was that we also had a high fatality rate because many of these elderly ones 80 and above didn't want to go on the ICU now we have few patients but the majority is quite young so we do everything for them and but we have also a non- covered wave let's put this way we have two more patients that have postponed their surgery etc so still a lot of things to be done in the clinics and let's hope that the delta wave will not you know present as many young patients that we have to treat in the clinics in the ICU awards clemens if you had one wish that would improve the treatment of covet patients what would that wish be the wish would be that there is the magic pill so an oral agent that can be used by the infected people before the disease really starts to to make complications. 

So the pill the anti-coved pill that can be taken at home this would be my wish for for the future infected patients with covid19.

let's see how long it takes until we

have that pill clements venting ahead of the schwabbing clinic.

while research for a drug to help covid19 patients continues several vaccines have already been developed to prevent people from catching the coronavirus despite high effectiveness people still have questions about the jab like the following one for our science correspondent derek williams

are there any ways to mitigate your chance of developing a thrombosis if you're vaccinated with astrazeneca I'm going to start this answer by saying something I've already said many times before which is that both trials and hundreds of millions of recipients show the astrazeneca vaccine is highly effective at preventing future infection with covet 19 and the chances of developing the blood clots that have been associated with a vaccine are extremely rare the exact numbers are kind of hard to interpret but the European Medicines Agency says that over the course of both doses about one recipient in 100 000 develops the side effect so it's a very uncommon occurrence that chance is so much smaller than the chance of a serious outcome if you contract covet 19 certainly for older people that there's a very clear benefit in getting the astrazeneca vaccine because vaccine-induced thrombosis is so rare we're still learning about it but we think we figured out the mechanisms that cause it and that coupled with simple awareness is now playing a big role in reducing the dangers for those who do develop the condition because it can be treated if doctors recognize it quickly.

 Symptoms of it can include severe headaches or blurred vision persistent pain and an extremity or in the abdomen shortness of breath or the development of unexplained bruising around the injection site and those symptoms usually occur between 4 and 30 days after vaccination. 

I couldn't find any advice about how to mitigate your chances of developing the rare side effect which there's no surprise there since we're still unable to predict even who might be vulnerable but being aware that a thrombosis can occur and vigilant about how it presents that can go a long way towards helping you if you turn out to be one of the very few people who are affected.