Friday, June 18, 2021
Antiviral drug shown to save lives of covid-19 patients in hospital
People who get seriously ill from covid-19 could be offered a new lifeline with the first antiviral drug shown to save lives in patients admitted to hospital, researchers have said.
The drug, a combination of two antibodies developed by Regeneron, reduced the risk of death when given to people with severe covid-19 who hadn’t mounted a natural antibody response of their own.
The chances of these patients needing to be put on a ventilator were also reduced, as was the duration of their hospital stay.
In the Recovery trial between 18 September 2020 and 22 May 2021, 9785 patients admitted to hospital with covid-19 in the UK were randomly allocated to receive the usual care plus the antibody combination treatment, or usual care alone.
Of these, about one-third were seronegative, meaning they had no natural antibody response of their own, and half were seropositive, meaning they had already developed natural antibodies against the virus. For one-sixth of those involved in the study, their antibody status was unknown.
Among patients who received usual care alone, mortality within 28 days of being admitted to the trial was 30 per cent in those without an antibody response, compared with 15 per cent in those who were seropositive at the start of the study.
For patients who had no antibody response, the treatment reduced the chance of them dying within 28 days by a fifth, compared with usual care alone.
For every 100 such patients treated with the antibody combination, there would be six fewer deaths, researchers say.
“This is in some ways a first,” said Martin Landray at the University of Oxford, joint chief investigator of the study. “This is an antiviral treatment that is used later on – because these patients are severe, they’ve gone into hospital – and has a demonstrated clear impact on survival, and on those other outcomes.
“So in its own right, it’s an important result because these patients are among the sickest patients, and here we now have a treatment we did not have before.”
For the seronegative patients given the treatment, the duration of hospital stay was four days shorter than the usual care group, and the proportion of patients discharged by day 28 was greater.
The treatment made no difference in patients who had mounted their own antibody response by the time the study started.
“These results are very exciting,” said Peter Horby, the other joint chief investigator, also from the University of Oxford. “The hope was that, by giving a combination of antibodies targeting the Sars-CoV-2 virus, we would be able to reduce the worst manifestations of covid-19. There was, however, great uncertainty about the value of antiviral therapies in late-stage covid-19 disease.
“It is wonderful to learn that even in advanced covid-19 disease, targeting the virus can reduce mortality in patients who have failed to mount an antibody response of their own.”
The researchers say they aren’t sure when the treatment will be approved for use in the UK. It is unlikely to be rolled out quickly as the drug isn’t particularly easy to get hold of and patients would need antibody testing on their admission to hospital – which isn’t currently in place.
The study has been published as a pre-print on medRxiv and hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed.
The treatment uses a combination of two monoclonal antibodies (casirivimab and imdevimab, known as REGEN-COV in the US) that bind specifically to two different sites on the coronavirus spike protein, neutralising the ability of the virus to infect cells.
Previous studies in people in the community showed that the treatment reduced viral load, shortened the time to resolution of symptoms and significantly reduced the risk of being admitted to hospital or death.
Stephen Powis, national medical director for NHS England, said: “These encouraging results from this trial carried out in and by the NHS suggest a new treatment option to help save the lives of some patients hospitalised with covid and are the latest example of research and innovation for patients, which the NHS has played a role in during the pandemic.
“Studies have also suggested the same treatments might help similar patients in the community avoid going to hospital in the first place, which is why yesterday the health service chief executive, Sir Simon Stevens, asked the NHS to rapidly establish a new monoclonal antibody service so we are ready to offer these drugs if backed by regulators.”
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YouTube Suspends Sen. Ron Johnson From Uploading Videos Over COVID-19, Hydroxychloroquine Claims
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) was suspended by YouTube and cannot upload videos for seven days, with the Google-owned video-sharing platform accusing him of spreading misinformation about COVID-19 treatments.
“YouTube’s arrogant Covid censorship continues,” he wrote in confirming the development. “How many lives will be lost as a result? How many lives could have been saved with a free exchange of medical ideas? This suppression of speech should concern every American.”
A spokesperson for YouTube told Fox News that one of Johnson’s videos was taken down because it violated its policies and claimed that he was spreading “medical misinformation.”
“We removed the video in accordance with our COVID-19 medical misinformation policies, which don’t allow content that encourages people to use Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus,” the spokesperson said. The Epoch Times has contacted the company for comment.
But by doing so, Johnson said that YouTube’s move to censor him suggests they have “accumulated too much unaccountable power.”
“Big Tech and mainstream media believe they are smarter than medical doctors who have devoted their lives to science and use their skills to save lives,” Johnson said in a statement to news outlets on Friday. “They have decided there is only one medical viewpoint allowed, and it is the viewpoint dictated by government agencies. How many lives will be lost as a result? How many lives could have been saved with a free exchange of medical ideas?”
In the video that was taken down, according to The Federalist, Johnson criticized federal bureaucrats for trying to dissuade the public from taking, or preventing them from knowing about, hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.
“It always baffled me that there was such a concerted effort to deny the American public the type of robust exploration research into early treatment early in this pandemic,” Johnson said, saying that he wanted more focus on the topic and said studies have suggested that “both hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin” are “incredibly safe” drugs.
Hydroxychloroquine, notably, was touted by President Donald Trump during COVID-19 task force briefings at the White House.
A recent study from medRxiv found that a combination of hydroxychloroquine, which is prescribed for malaria, and zinc may increase the COVID-19 survival rate by around 200 percent in some cases where a patient has a severe case and requires ventilation.
“We found that when the cumulative doses of two drugs, HCQ and AZM, were above a certain level, patients had a survival rate 2.9 times the other patients,” the study’s conclusion said.
But last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning against using hydroxychloroquine, citing potential side-effects such as “serious heart rhythm problems and other safety issues, including blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries, and liver problems and failure.”
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Russian oil imports have set a new record in the United States despite the strained relationship between Washington and Moscow
Industry experts believe the Biden administration’s climate policies will make the country more dependent on foreign oil producers.
The United States imported record levels of crude oil from Russia in March and is expected to continue importing at high levels in coming months, according to the Western Energy Alliance, a trade association that represents 200 independent natural gas and oil producers in the United States.
Imports of crude oil and petroleum products from Russia reached 22.9 million barrels in March, the highest level since August of 2010, according to International Energy Agency (IEA). Of the total amount, crude oil imports from Russia stood at 6.1 million barrels. Russia has become the third-largest oil exporter to the United States.
High levels of oil shipment from Russia have continued since March, according to ClipperData, a commodity intelligence company that monitors cargo shipments worldwide.
“Last month we saw a record 5.75 million barrels of Russian crude discharged in the US, and we’re projecting a further record this month of 7.5mn bbls,” ClipperData analysts wrote on Twitter on June 7.
Critics argue that Biden’s climate agenda is hard on the U.S. oil industry but soft on foreign producers.
“It’s disturbing to our industry that the Biden administration goes out of its way to disadvantage the American producer while buttressing the Iranian and Russian industries,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, told The Epoch Times.
The recent spike in Russian oil imports has followed the “misguided climate policies” of the administration, including ending the Keystone XL pipeline and pausing new oil and natural gas permitting on public lands and waters, according to Sgamma.
President Joe Biden has “tipped us into oil dependence on Russia just a year after complete independence,” Sgamma said, calling it “a geopolitical gift” to the Kremlin.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude surpassed the $70 mark last week, reaching the highest level in over two years. Top commodity traders now believe oil prices could see $100 per barrel due to supply constraints. Oil hasn’t traded above $100 per barrel since 2014.
“There’s been kind of a dearth of investment in fossil fuels, which is going to leave us undersupplied as we go forward,” Phil Flynn, senior energy analyst at the Price Future Group, told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.
He noted that the Biden administration’s climate policies, which will reduce the supply of oil and gas, have been a major factor in driving the prices.
“U.S. oil production has fallen by 1.715 million barrels [per day] from a year ago, so a large part of that void is being filled by Russia,” Flynn wrote in a recent op-ed on Fox Business.
“During Trump’s term, America was competing with Russia and Saudi Arabia to be the world’s dominant oil and gas producer, yet under Biden, we are retreating from that race in the name of climate change,” he wrote.
An increase in oil and gas prices will help boost Russia’s energy and political dominance, he argued, criticizing Biden’s recent move that will allow Russia to supply natural gas to Germany.
The Biden administration last month waived Trump-era sanctions against the company building the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline that links Russia and Germany.
The pipeline is expected to increase the dependence of the region on Russia for natural gas. Construction on the 764-mile pipeline that began in 2018 was a source of friction between Washington and its European allies.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/us-reliance-on-russian-oil-surges-to-record-highs-amid-tensions_3863635.html
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