(Adds quotes from Hancock)
LONDON, April 3 (Reuters) - Results from clinical trials of
possible drugs to treat the coronavirus are likely a few months
away, England's Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam
said on Friday.
Van-Tam said Britain wanted to move on to new medicines in
the next round of clinical trials, including those that might be
in development for other diseases but might "have a role to
play".
"I know that there'll be a question about when are we going
to get some results from these clinical trials, and my straight
answer to you is: 'I don't know.' I think it's going to be a few
months," he told a news conference.
Health Minister Matt Hancock said that until possible
treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus,
were shown to be effective, the only protection against it was
to stay at home.
He said that so far clinical trials had been focused on
repurposing existing drugs and steroids for treatment of
COVID-19.
"We've also set up an expert therapeutics taskforce to
search for and shortlist other candidate medicines for trials,"
Hancock said.
"We need more patients to volunteer to be part of these
trials because the bigger the trials, the better the data and
the faster we can roll out the treatments, if - and only if
-it's proven to work."
(Reporting by Andy Bruce, William James and Alistair Smout,
Writing by Kylie MacLellan, Editing by Estelle Shirbon and
Stephen Addison)