The Recovery trial was set up in March 2020 to test existing drugs on
Covid patients, to see if they had an effect on the disease. The
findings of the trial have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

As the Number 18 bus wove through the London traffic, two passengers
were deep in conversation. What they agreed on the pre-lockdown roads
near Euston would change the course of the pandemic and possibly the
future of medicine.

It would unite researchers, the NHS and 40,000 Covid patients in an
endeavour uniquely suited to a national public health service. It would
save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Covid patients around the
world. It would create the UK's Recovery trial.

The two bus passengers were Prof Martin Landray, a doctor and designer
of large-scale drug trials, and Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the
Wellcome Trust, one of the world's biggest funders of medical research -
and one of the funders of Recovery.

Together Prof Horby and Prof Landray would form the scientific axis that
would define the treatment of Covid.

Just shy of 100 days after that fateful bus journey, Prof Landray and
Prof Horby were preparing to tell the world. They knew they were about
to change treatment for patients everywhere and had spent a week
repeatedly going over the numbers to be sure.

Four hours after the announcement, treatment with dexamethasone became
NHS policy and the rest of the world swiftly followed.

Recovery showed another drug, tocilizumab, also saves lives. But just as
importantly it found the duds. The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, the
HIV combo lopinavir/ritonavir and the antibiotic azithromycin had all
been hyped up, but ultimately shown to have no effect.

Dexamethasone alone is now estimated to have saved hundreds of thousands
of lives; possibly more than a million.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56508369