The recovery time is also important here. It's my understanding that patients with severe cases who live can spend weeks in intensive care.
Even if the death rate is not greatly reduced, if patients recover faster that relieves a great deal of strain on the health care system. Not to mention that it relieves an enormous amount of suffering.
And if it reduces the amount of time that patients are contagious, it makes the epidemic easier to control.
Additionally, if this treatment speeds recovery - it may help to avoid potential long-term lung damage. Lung damage is largely just a hypothesis right now, but Docs feel it's likely.
Yes, plasma from recovered patients also looks very promising. But at this stage we don't have nearly enough plasma from recovered patients to go around*, even though one person's plasma can treat three people.
(*At least not that we know of. We may find a lot more recovered patients out there if we were to start widespread testing.)
So our best bet in the immediate term is to keep trialing ALL promising treatments as expeditiously as possible.
If there turn out to be several effective treatment options, that's even better. That way there are fewer supply bottlenecks and additional treatment options for patients who can't tolerate a certain drug.
The recovery time is also important here. It's my understanding that patients with severe cases who live can spend weeks in intensive care.
Even if the death rate is not greatly reduced, if patients recover faster that relieves a great deal of strain on the health care system. Not to mention that it relieves an enormous amount of suffering.
And if it reduces the amount of time that patients are contagious, it makes the epidemic easier to control.
Additionally, if this treatment speeds recovery - it may help to avoid potential long-term lung damage. Lung damage is largely just a hypothesis right now, but Docs feel it's likely.
Yes, plasma from recovered patients also looks very promising. But at this stage we don't have nearly enough plasma from recovered patients to go around*, even though one person's plasma can treat three people.
(*At least not that we know of. We may find a lot more recovered patients out there if we were to start widespread testing.)
So our best bet in the immediate term is to keep trialing ALL promising treatments as expeditiously as possible.
If there turn out to be several effective treatment options, that's even better. That way there are fewer supply bottlenecks and additional treatment options for patients who can't tolerate a certain drug.
Remember though that of those hospitalized the death rate is much higher, especially for the elderly at almost 6%. This is huge.