Treating Covid

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: A year of experience has led to greater knowledge in managing Covid-19 infection, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Reflecting on the past year of treating people with Covid-19 infection, Brian Garibaldi, a critical care medicine expert at Johns Hopkins, says there are lessons learned.

Garibaldi: If you go on oxygen you’re going to get remdesivir. And you’re probably going to get dexamethasone. They’ll be a subset of patients who get tocilizumab, and they’ll be selected patients who get full dose anticoagulation. It’s hard to know what has really driven some of the decreases we’ve seen in mortality. Some of it’s going to be therapeutics I do think they have a role to play. A lot of it is we’ve become accustomed to working in these environments. One of the big factors I think underlies some of the ebbs and flows we’ve seen in mortality is simply the number of people who get hospitalized.  :29

Garibaldi says there is still a need to develop effective medications to treat Covid-19, and there are a number of trials ongoing looking at both repurposing existing medicines as well as developing and testing novel therapeutics. He notes that a need for updated vaccines appears likely. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.