Vale of Clwyd MP Dr James Davies is highlighting the welcome progress that has been made in controlling Covid-19, after being told by a leading scientist involved in the fight against the coronavirus that the case fatality rate in hospitalised patients is currently 50% lower than what it was during the first wave of the pandemic.
At a joint House of Commons Science and Technology Committee and Health and Social Care Committee last week, James questioned Professor Peter Horby, of Oxford University, who is heading the UK’s world-leading Recovery trial of several potential new treatments, over a number of issues including how effective NHS management of the virus has been, and was encouraged to be told of “a number of areas where improvement has happened.”
The Professor told James:
“Although it is early days, it would appear that the case fatality in hospitalised patients has come down quite a lot.
“The case fatality rate in hospitalised patients appeared to be about 30% in wave 1. It now appears to be about 15%, about half, which is fantastic news. We have to be a bit cautious because the age profile is not the same at the moment. As more older people come in, I think it will creep up.
“It indicates that the NHS is getting better at treating Covid patients.
“Clinicians are getting better at managing that part of the disease, and that is improving survival.”
Professor Horby attributed the falling death rate to the use of the steroid dexamethasone, improvements in respiratory support – such as giving patients pressurised oxygen masks rather than placing them on a ventilator – and the use of anticoagulant drugs to prevent blood clotting.
In further questions to the Professor, James referred to the “huge public interest in drug treatment for Covid”, with his constituents frequently raising potential treatments, and asked how drug candidates are identified for the trial.
Professor Horby said there are three broad categories of drugs: the antiviral drugs; the immunomodulators, which are the anti-inflammatory drugs; and the anticlotting drugs, and that sub-committees have been set up to look at all of those.
He said: “They have done a fantastic job. They have been very rigorous. They produce multi-page reports on every drug and systematically look at the evidence base for it. They then recommend that it is not prioritised or that it is shelved for now, pending new data coming out, or it is recommended for going to trial meeting.”
James also questioned Professor Andrew Pollard, the chief trial investigator for the Oxford vaccine trial, leading work on two of the potential vaccines, over “the likelihood that we will need vaccines that change each year, or at various intervals in the future.”
The Professor said “the chance of the virus changing is quite high”, but that “the chance of it changing in the particular component of the virus that binds to the ACE-2 receptor to cause infection is relatively lower”. This is important because vaccines currently under development relate to this component. However he stressed that there is still much uncertainty, due to the fact that currently “ the virus is not under any pressure to make changes”.
Speaking after the meeting, James said:
“Our scientists are working flat out to find the answers that we all so desperately want and need and we should all be thankful for their outstanding efforts. The first vaccine is potentially just now weeks away from being available.
“It was great to hear that fatalities in hospitalised patients have halved since the first wave early on in this pandemic. There is no doubt that we still have a long way to go in getting this virus under control, but it is important that we do not lose sight of the progress that has been made.”
