Researchers at the University of Oxford announced Tuesday that they had found the first proven life-saving coronavirus treatment, after a clinical trial of dexamethasone, a low-cost steroid treatment, cut the risk of death by one-third for coronavirus patients on ventilators and one-fifth for those on oxygen.
The study, part of the U.K.’s “Recovery Trial” project to find existing treatments for COVID-19, compared approximately 2,000 hospital patients that were given dexamethasone with nearly 4,000 who did not get the drug.
For patients on ventilators it cut death risk from 40 percent to 28 percent, while patients who required oxygen saw their death risk fall from 25 percent to 20 percent..
