Coronavirus: WHO urges rapid production of dexamethasone for critical Covid-19 patients

The World Health Organisation on Monday urged for rapid production of dexamethasone, the cheap corticosteroid that has shown to bring down the death rate in critical Covid-19 coronavirus patients.

The WHO had earlier this week said that dexamethasone should be reserved for serious cases in which it has been shown to provide benefits.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier this week said research was at last providing "green shoots of hope" in treating the virus, which has killed more than 470,000 people worldwide and infected more than 9 million.

Trial results announced last week by researchers in Britain showed dexamethasone, a generic drug used since the 1960s to reduce inflammation in diseases such as arthritis, cut death rates by around a third among the most severely ill coronavirus patients admitted to hospital.

What is dexamethasone?

Dexamethasone is a steroid, an anti-inflammatory drug. It reduces the body's inflammatory reaction by mimicking the usual steroid hormones produced by our body. Its main action is anti-inflammatory activity.