Thread by @WHO

🆕 treatment recommendation from WHO:
WHO recommends life-saving interleukin-6 receptor blockers to treat #COVID19 and urges producers to join efforts to rapidly increase access.

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Interleukin-6 receptor blockers are a class of medicines that are lifesaving in patients who are severely or critically ill with #COVID19, especially when administered alongside corticosteroids.

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Patients severely or critically ill with #COVID19 often suffer from an overreaction of the immune system, which can be very harmful to the patient’s health. Interleukin-6 blocking drugs – tocilizumab and sarilumab – act to suppress this overreaction.

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In severely or critically ill patients, administering these drugs reduce the odds of death by 13%, compared to standard care. This means that there will be 15 fewer deaths per thousand patients, and as many as 28 fewer deaths for every thousand critically ill patients.

To increase access and affordability of these life-saving products, WHO calls on manufacturers to reduce prices and make supplies available to low- and middle-income countries, especially where #COVID19 is surging.
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