The country's first convalescent plasma transfusion trial results have been peer-reviewed and published, showing 19 out of 25 patients improving with the treatment and 11 discharged from the hospital. On March 28, Houston Methodist became the first academic medical center in the nation to transfuse plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients into two critically ill patients.

A new study from researchers at The University of Texas at Austin has found that some antivirals are useful for more than helping sick people get better - they also can prevent thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of virus cases if used in the early stages of infection.

Due to the devastating worldwide impact of COVID-19, the illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, there has been unprecedented efforts by clinicians and researchers from around the world to quickly develop safe and effective treatments and vaccines. Given that COVID-19 is a complex new disease with no existing vaccine or specific treatment, much effort is being made to investigate the repurposing of approved and available drugs, as well as those under development.

Glucocorticoids are widely used in treating acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) despite there being no indisputable scientific evidence of their effectiveness. The main reason seems to be that there is no effective treatment for ARDS patients on ventilators. The death rate of these patients differs between 30-40 percent depending on the data.

In a perspective piece published in the journal Science, UC San Diego experts describe in detail the growing evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, can be spread by asymptomatic people via aerosols - a reality that deeply underscores the ongoing importance of regular widespread testing, wearing masks and physical distancing to reduce the spread of the virus.

The investigational antiviral remdesivir is superior to the standard of care for the treatment of COVID-19, according to a report published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. The preliminary analysis is based on data from the Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT), sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

For some COVID-19 patients, the body's immune response may be as destructive as the virus that causes the disease. The persistent high fevers, severe respiratory distress, and lung damage seen in some critically ill patients are all signs of an immune system in overdrive.