My Question to the Government on medicines provided to treat Covid-19

The Department of Health and Social Care has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (133606):

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the progress that has been made in the testing of (a) anti-viral treatments, (b) immune modulators and (c) other existing medicines to help provide improved treatments for covid-19. (133606)
Tabled on: 06 January 2021

Answer:
Jo Churchill:
The Department is carefully considering all available evidence from clinical trials in the United Kingdom and overseas around the potential of different drugs across a variety of different modes of action for use in treating COVID-19.

On 7 January 2021, the REMAP-CAP clinical trial published results showing that two immunomodulators, tocilizumab and sarilumab, reduced the relative risk of death by 24% for critically ill patients and time spent in intensive care by up to 10 days.

The UK national priority platform clinical trials – RECOVERY, REMAP-CAP and PRINCIPLE – can test both licensed and unlicensed drugs. These are adaptive trials, meaning that results are monitored on an ongoing basis and treatments which are clearly ineffective will be discontinued. Trials may also add new potential treatments if other evidence suggests promise.