Korea backs remdesivir for COVID-19, urges caution with dexamethasone

A lab technician holds the COVID-19 treatment drug "Remdesivir" at the Eva Pharma Facility in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday (local time). Reuters

The government has added Gilead's anti-viral drug remdesivir to its COVID-19 treatment guidelines in its first revision of recommendations since the coronavirus pandemic began and urged caution in the use of the steroid therapy dexamethasone.

South Korea, widely praised around the world for its handling of the pandemic without a full lockdown, has reported 12,602 coronavirus infections as of midnight Thursday, with 282 deaths.

Remdesivir is designed to prevent certain viruses, including the new coronavirus, from making copies of themselves and potentially overwhelming the body's immune system. The drug previously failed trials as an Ebola treatment.

The updated guidelines come after a study showed that the cheap and widely used dexamethasone reduced deaths in very sick COVID-19 patients. They advised doctors to take caution until a full study is published.

"It seems appropriate to administer (dexamethasone), limited to severe cases with acute respiratory syndrome, as long as doctors monitor the patient's condition," Kim Young-ok, director general of the Pharmaceutical Safety Bureau at the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, told reporters in a briefing Friday.

Korea has an adequate supply of dexamethasone ― widely used since the 1960s ― with the production of approximately 43 million tablets and 60 million injection ampoules annually, Kim said.

Doctors in Europe will soon be able to treat patients with the drug after the endorsement by health regulators there put it on track to become the first therapy for the disease on the continent.

"An excessive use of dexamethasone can trigger different side effects as it hampers the immune system and causes inflammation, possibly leading to even cataracts or glaucoma," said Song Dae-sub, a professor of pharmacology at Korea University.

The health authorities also advised halting any treatment with hydroxychloroquine after a study found the decades-old malaria drug, touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as a possible treatment, was found not to provide any benefits.

There are currently no approved vaccines or treatments for the coronavirus, which has killed more than 488,467 people globally, but about a dozen vaccines from more than 100 candidates globally have reached human trials. (Reuters)