We just got our first sign that a cheap steroid can treat coronavirus

Hello,

Welcome to Dispensed Daily, your daily dose of healthcare news from Business Insider. My name's Lydia Ramsey Pflanzer, and I'm a healthcare editor here at Business Insider.

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We've made it to Wednesday. Here are some of the top stories we've been following.

We just got our first sign that a cheap steroid can treat COVID-19

Early Tuesday, the researchers taking part in a UK clinical trial said that they'd found some success in using dexamethasone, a decades-old steroid, in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Giving the steroid in critically ill COVID-19 patients on ventilators reduced deaths by one-third, and it reduced deaths in patients on oxygen by 20%. COVID-19 patients who didn't need help with breathing didn't benefit from the drug, my colleagues Shira Feder and Andrew Dunn report.

It prompted the UK's National Health Service to issue an immediate authorization for the use of dexamethasone in COVID-19 patients.

The caveat: All we have so far to go off is a press release. That's been a common refrain in the race to develop treatments and vaccines — there's usually a lag between an announcement of results and then the fully published results. That means we don't necessarily have a full picture into any side effects or issues that might've come up in patients given dexamethasone. My kingdom for published randomized clinical trial results.

You can read the full story here >>

A cheap steroid dramatically reduced coronavirus deaths in a 'major breakthrough' trial

The US will make a coronavirus vaccine free to 'vulnerable' Americans, a senior Operation Warp Speed official pledges

• Operation Warp Speed is the Trump administration's effort to have 300 million doses of a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine available by January 2021.
• The pricing pledge was made on a Tuesday briefing call with reporters about the effort.
• "For any American who is vulnerable, cannot afford the vaccine and desires the vaccine, we will provide it for free," a senior official said. "I think that's the most important aspect of this."

Read the full story by Andrew here >>

Flushing the toilet could create a 3-foot vortex of airborne coronavirus poop particles, a new study shows

• Multiple studies have found traces of the coronavirus in infected patients' poop.
• A new study found that when toilets are flushed, they create a cloud of tiny aerosol droplets — which could potentially contain the virus — up to three feet above the toilet bowl.
• The cloud can remain there for about one minute and might land on other surfaces around the bathroom.
• It's unclear if you could be infected from this level of exposure, because scientists still don't know how much of the virus you need to be exposed to in order to get sick.
• But you should close the toilet lid before you flush to prevent this cloud from escaping into the bathroom.

(An important PSA. Yes, that diagram is of toilet-flushing simulations.)

Read the full story by Holly Secon here >>

More stories we're reading:

• Investors have poured more than $1.6 billion into a new breed of startups upending clinical trials. Here are the top 10 upstarts taking new approaches to drug research.(Business Insider)
• Digital health company Proteus Health, once valued at $1.5 billion, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (CNBC)
• Verily's Onduo helped people with type 2 diabetes better control their blood sugar, according to data presented Tuesday (FierceBiotech)

We're testing out a daily version of my weekly email, Dispensed. Let me know what you think and what you'd like to see here — I'm at lramsey@businessinsider.com. Subscribe to the daily email here.

- Lydia

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They'll be speaking on supporting the mental health of employees while working remotely.

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