Odată cu vaccinurile rămase în urmă, tratamentele oferă cheia pentru reducerea numărului de decese COVID din India

A report by the Washington-based Center for Global Development has dezvăluit that, while official figures set India’s Covid-19 death toll at just over 420,000, the real figure could be up to ten times greater. According to the Center, that would make India the country with the highest coronavirus death toll in the world, far depășind the United States and Brazil, and would also make the pandemic “arguably India's worst human tragedy since partition and independence", scrie Colin Stevens.

Covid-19 deaths have likely been underestimated in Europe as well, with the World Health Organization (WHO) de raportare deaths worldwide are likely to be “two to three” times higher than official figures. But in India, patru din cinci deaths were not medically investigated even before the pandemic; now, due to a lack of hospital beds and oxygen, an unknown number of coronavirus sufferers are moarte untested and unregistered at home. Widespread social stigmat surrounding COVID-19 has compounded this phenomenon, with families often declaring a different cause of death.

While India’s coronavirus infections and deaths have sharply decreased from the vârf of the second wave in May, the country has still lost over 16,000 oameni to Covid since the start of July. Public health experts avertiza India should brace for a third devastating wave by October, adding urgency to the hunt for tools to help patients who contract severe cases of Covid.

India’s vaccine drive misses targets

Vaccines are the main preventative tool to keep severe infections at bay, and India has already distributed some 430 milioane doze—more than any other nation after China. Even so, only 6.9% of the Indian population has been fully vaccinated so far, out of a population of 1.4 miliarde citizens. Since the apariție of the highly contagious Delta variant in October 2020, India’s immunisation drive has been plagued with vaccine shortages, broken supply chains, and vaccine hesitancy.

This month, the WHO announced India will receive 7.5 milioane de euro doses of the Moderna vaccine via the COVAX facility, but India’s domestic vaccine rollout continues to hit stumbling blocks. Bharat Biotech – who produce the country’s only approved homegrown vaccine, Covaxin – this week proiectat further delays, making it impossible for India to meet its target of distributing 516 milioane de euro shots by the end of July.

International disagreement on treatments

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With herd immunity still far out of reach, India’s medical services still desperately need effective treatment solutions to help hospitalised patients. Fortunately, life-saving therapeutic options now being tried and tested in Europe could soon offer powerful weapons against the most dangerous infections.

While the number of Covid treatments available are growing as drugs complete clinical trials, global public health bodies are still divided as to which ones are most effective. The only treatment to receive the European Union’s greenlight is Gilead's remdesivir, but the WHO actively advises against that particular antiviral treatment, recomandând instead two ‘interleukin-6 receptor blockers’ known as tocilizumab and sarilumab. Tocilizumab has also been dovedit eficient by the wide-ranging RECOVERY trial in the UK, reducing time in hospital and the need for mechanically-assisted breathing.

Despite being a global hub for drug manufacturing, India is not always as quick to approve them. US pharmaceutical company Merck potențat India's manufacturing capacity for the antiviral medicine molnupiravir to help fight the second wave this past April, but local drug trials will not be terminat until September at the earliest. In the interim, Indian authorities have acordate emergency approval to a different treatment for Covid-19, 2-DG, despite a lack of published trial data for the molecule.

New treatments like Leukine in the pipeline

This limited set of extant Covid-19 drugs will soon be bolstered by other promising therapies. One such treatment, Partner Therapeutics’ sargramostim – known commercially as Leukine – is currently undergoing testing in both Europe and the United States with a view towards rapid approval. In February, trials led by University Hospital Ghent and bringing together five Belgian hospitals found that Leukine “can significantly improve oxygenation in COVID-19 patients with acute hypoxic respiratory failure,” increasing oxygenation in the majority of patients by at least a third from baseline levels.

After noting Leukine’s potential, the US Department of Defence semnat a $35 million contract to fund two Phase 2 clinical trials in order to supplement preliminary data. This past June, the results of the second randomizat US trials of inhaled Leukine once again showed positive improvements in the lung functions of patients with the acute hypoxemia caused by severe Covid, confirming the Belgian findings that oxygen levels in patients who had primit Leukine were higher than those who did not.

Effective Covid treatments would reduce pressure on Indian healthcare providers not only by improving chances of survival, but also by accelerating recuperare times and freeing up hospital beds for other patients, including those dealing with other ailments. Faster treatments would also reduce the dangers posed to patients by contagious conditions such as black fungus, which has already been implicat in the deaths of over 4,300 hospitalised Covid patients in India. Greater clarity and accessibility surrounding treatments would also curb the worrying uptick in Indian families turning to the piață neagră to purchase medical supplies of unknown provenance at hugely inflated prices.

Treatments that improve recovery rates and prevent fatal cases of Covid will remain crucial for as long as most Indians remain unvaccinated. Provided new drugs are approved in a timely manner, improved medical understanding of the virus means new Covid patients should have a better prognosis than ever.

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