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Cassandra Szklarski March 01, 2021 - 8:46 AM
TORONTO - Alongside the headline-grabbing race for a COVID-19 vaccine, the hunt for effective treatments has unfolded with its own share of flameouts and triumphs.
Thanks to large randomized trials in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, administering steroids to patients with moderate or severe illness has become part of standard care, but clinicians say few other tools have emerged.
The best known COVID-19 drug is likely dexamethasone, a corticosteroid with anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant effects for hospitalized patients who need help breathing.
But while that drug is credited with helping efforts to bring down hospital mortality rates, credit also goes to discoveries about what does not work against the novel coronavirus â thereby ensuring people get appropriate care.
What comes next: UHN’s continued effort in defeating COVID-19
Post-vaccine, there are still a lot of unknowns when it comes to the virus’ long-term impacts By Joseph Cicerone
Created for
Dr. Bradly Wouters was present as one of Canada’s first COVID-19 vaccines was administered to a personal support worker at Toronto’s University Health Network (UHN) in December. A symbol of optimism, that historic day has affirmed the value of science and global cooperation amidst the pandemic. “I don’t think we can understate how incredible it is that the world collectively developed safe, effective vaccines in a period of 10 months,” says Dr. Wouters, UHN’s Executive Vice President of Science and Research. After months of collective distress, Canadians are beginning to anticipate an end to what many have described as the greatest challenge of our lifetime.
Cassandra Szklarski
Dr. Jordan Feld, a liver specialist at UHN s Toronto Centre for Liver Disease, poses in this recent handout photo. More than a year after COVID-19 emerged, few therapies exist and many that do are expensive, cumbersome and unproven, say experts who blame disjointed data, funding and communication as factors derailing efforts to tamp down disease. While warp speed efforts to develop vaccines have produced several promising options in mere months, thereâs been comparatively little push for treatment tools to cut severe cases and deaths that are crippling health-care systems, says COVID-19 researcher Dr. Feld.
Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - University Health Network
Cassandra Szklarski February 09, 2021 - 2:31 PM
TORONTO - Alongside the headline-grabbing race for a COVID-19 vaccine, the hunt for effective treatments has unfolded with its own share of flameouts and triumphs.
Thanks to large randomized trials in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, administering steroids to patients with moderate or severe illness has become part of standard care, but clinicians say few other tools have emerged.
The best known COVID-19 drug is likely dexamethasone, a corticosteroid with anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant effects for hospitalized patients who need help breathing.
But while that drug is credited with helping efforts to bring down hospital mortality rates, credit also goes to discoveries about what does not work against the novel coronavirus â thereby ensuring people get appropriate care.