Research teams joining the fight against COVID-19
Research nurses, midwives, practitioners and the pharmacy clinical trials team across Royal Derby Hospital and Queen's Hospital Burton have joined the battle to find out more information and look for a treatment for COVID-19.
Since the pandemic began the research teams across the Trust have focussed resources on supporting COVID-19 studies, and the Trust is part of national and international teams of researchers working to develop new investigations into treatments and to build and share our knowledge of this virus.
We have a team of research nurses, midwives and practitioners at both Royal Derby and Queen's Hospital who are working with clinician colleagues to recruit people into the COVID-19 trials running at UHDB.
The most current and promising potential treatments have been identified and are featured on the list of nationally-prioritised studies, which have been given urgent public health research status including:
- PRINCIPLE: a platform trial of interventions against COVID-19 in older people (taking place in Primary Care);
- RECOVERY: a trial to evaluate if existing or new drugs can help patients hospitalised with confirmed COVID-19; and
- REMAP-CAP: a platform trial for severely ill patients with COVID-19
The RECOVERY trial, is open to recruitment at both Royal Derby and Queen's Hospital sites, led by Dr Tom Bewick and Dr Uttam Nanda respectively, and is supported by a dedicated clinical research team.
RECOVERY is now the biggest trial of drugs aimed at treating COVID-19 in the world with more than 8,000 patients now taking part. This trial was one of the first to be approved and signed off by Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, with the first patient was recruited only nine days later.
In both Derby and Burton, the Pharmacy Clinical Trials Team have been integral in ensuring the RECOVERY trial was set up and implemented efficiently, in order for the pharmacy departments to supply the variety of trial medicines to the patients being randomised into the trial each day.
As 5 May 2020, 92 patients had been recruited to take part in the Recovery trial at UHDB.
UHDB are proud to be involved in the response to COVID-19 and a big thank you to everyone who has taken part so far.