peter horby is professor of emerging infectious diseases in the nuffield department of medicine at oxforded the research into dexamethasone, and he spoke to us as he made his way to downing street for this afternoon's briefing. i am as delighted as anybody, it's fantastic. we've been running this trial for quite some time, for three months, and it's fantastic to have some good news. this is a drug that very affordable, it is widely available and we've shown that it can have a good impact on improving survival in quite a large proportion of hospitalised patients. we showed a benefit in patients who required oxygen on the ward, with about a 20% reduction in the risk of dying, as well as a reduction in the rate of death in those on mechanical ventilation. and that was an even bigger reduction, that was a 35% reduction in the risk of death. we were surprised by the result. we were obviously hopeful that the drug would have benefits, that's why we trialled it, but we were quite staggered by the size of the benefits, so it's really fantastic news. lead's talk more about that fantastic news as t

professor horby: gooood questio.knoww some of thehe i iormatn that came out isis that steroids might actctually exacerbate didisease and thosose that are n the rlrly stages, so i thinknk e of the cononcerns with dexamethasonone is would there e ththe potential that if you treated patientnts too eararly t you might actually end up increasing the potential severity of diseasese, because t actually acts as an anti-infnflammatory, soo i t the have to look a at t this a as a potential g game changer for the patients with sevevere disease distressss, but we arere still lacking some sort of therapeutic that will ultimately help reduce infections in the very early stages of disease. brent: it sounds like, if i am understanding you correctly, it matters here the time in the course of the disisease when you administer this drug, because if you administer it too earlyly, u can actually acceleratate cocovid-19. is that correct? professosor hororby: that is potential. the tricky issue is we do not necessarily see c ce-alls outsid

this is in the more severe patients the lead investigator from oxford professor peter horby saying "dexamethasoneug to be shown to improve survival in covid-19 the survival benefit is clear and large in the patients sick enough to require oxygen treatment. it should now become standard of care in these patients dexamet dexamet dexamethasone is inexpensive." researchers have been searching for anything that works so clearly this is positive news but guys, we are starting to see some push-back and the skepticism about this announcement because it wasn't published in a peer review journal. tweeting out "it will be great news if it does cut deaths by a third in ventilated patients with covid-19 but after all the retraction answer walk-backs it is unacceptable to tout study results by press results without releasing the paper. just want to see more data back over to you >> good to get the first results no question about it meg tirrell, thank you >>> for more on the markets and the fed, as we await chair powell, we are joined on the cnbc newsline by deutsche bank's alan ruskin and phil camporeale, from

peter horby is professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health for the nuffield departmentease? yes, i know, i'm as delighted as anybody. it is fantastic. we have been running this trial for three months and fantastic. we have been running this trialfor three months and it fantastic. we have been running this trial for three months and it is fantastic to have some good news. this drug is very affordable and widely available and can have a good impact on improving survival in a large proportion of hospitalised patients. more specifically, patients. more specifically, patients who are on ventilators? well, it is broader than that, actually we showed the benefit in patients who required oxygen on the ward with about a 20% reduction in the chance of dying, as well as a reduction in the rate of death of those on ventilation. that was a bigger reduction of 35%. it is not a vaccine, but this is hugely significant? no, it is. we were surprised by the results. we were hopeful that the drug would have a benefit, that is why we trialled it, but we were staggered by the size of benefit