FDA warns public vs non-prescribed use of steroid dexamethasone
MANILA, Philippines — The country’s Food and Drug Administration warned the public against purchase and use of widely-available steroid dexamethasone—hailed as a breakthrough to help reduce deaths from coronavirus disease (COVID-19)—without a doctor’s prescription.
In an advisory Friday, the FDA stressed that dexamethasone is a prescription drug and should be strictly used under the supervision of a licensed physician.
“The drug should be only dispensed by licensed establishments to patients with valid prescription. The sale of unregistered dexamethasone or sale of the drug without valid prescription or through online platforms is strictly prohibited,” it said.
A team of researchers from the University of Oxford said preliminary results of a study showed that dexamethasone—which is normally used to treat allergic reactions as well as rheumatoid arthritis—had reduced deaths among the seriously ill COVID-19 patients by a third.
The FDA warned that misuse or unsupervised use of the drug may lead to impairment of the body’s ability to fight infections, gastrointestinal bleeding and ulcers, electrolyte imbalance, osteoporosis and muscle weakness.
It added that prolonged use of dexamethasone may cause suppression of growth among infants and children as well as obesity. It may also result in hypotension, shock and coma, if stopped abruptly.
The Department of Health earlier cautioned the public against the unregulated use of dexamethasone. DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said experts have yet to validate the findings of University of Oxford researchers.
“People might think that this is the magic pill for COVID-19. It is not,” she said Wednesday.
Currently, there are no treatments and vaccines approved for COVID-19.
The new coronavirus has so far infected 28,459 people in the Philippines, with 1,130 deaths.
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New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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