Charlotte Martin was the guest of the morning on Bel RTL. The infectious disease specialist from the CHU Saint-Pierre in Brussels returned to the quack at the Heysel vaccination center, where the summons did not reach due to a computer problem, but also on the progress that has been made in the treatment of symptoms of coronavirus.
Fabrice Grosfilley: We are a year after the first wave, have we made any progress with regard to treatments against the coronavirus?
Charlotte Martin: Yes, we have made enormous progress. As expected, we had to wait for the results of large studies which were nevertheless started very quickly at the time of the first wave. We are starting to have good quality results coming in.
We hear a lot of names: chloroquine, dexamethasone, remdesivir … In everything you’ve tried, are there things that work?
The most convincing remains dexamethasone, which reduces mortality by almost 30% in patients who needed oxygen, who were hospitalized. This is what we give to all of our patients who come into our home and need oxygen.
An anti-inflammatory, inexpensive, that you use consistently?
It is used in all of our oxygen-dependent patients. There are also other molecules like tocilizumab, a potent anti-inflammatory, which has recently shown interest in severe Covid patients. This is an additional string to our bow.
Do you combine several treatments according to the characteristics of the patient?
This is medicine. We have a pathology that presents itself differently, and there are subgroups of patients. There is never a universal answer.
Today, we manage to avoid the intubation of certain patients?
With dexamethasone, yes. Maybe tocilizumab too. But there remains a non-negligible proportion of patients that we will have to intubate, but we also saw as the pandemic progressed that we should not intubate too quickly.
Concretely, today, in Saint-Pierre, in your hospital, you manage to save many more patients than a year ago?
We have mortality figures that have decreased compared to one year, indeed.
With everything you are telling us, and the vaccination of people at risk, we could consider that it is an almost “normal” disease, that we manage to treat quite normally?
We slowly come to tame it. If we manage to protect the patients who die the most from this disease, and if we have a sufficiently developed therapeutic arsenal for all forms of the disease, we can indeed begin to breathe.
Wouldn’t it be a disaster for hospitals to consider flexibility once people at risk have been vaccinated?
This is the aim of the vaccination campaign. Once those at risk are vaccinated, we can relax and let the virus circulate a little.
Coronavirus in Belgium: where is the epidemic this Wednesday, February 17?
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