Clinical trial for coronavirus treatment is underway at Harrogate District Hospital

The programme is called the RECOVERY Trial (The Randomised Evaluation of covid-19 therapy) and is run by the University of Oxford.

The university got the support of Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty and put out a plea to doctors around the country to enrol patients in the voluntary trial.

More than 160 NHS trusts have since joined the study and scientists are hopeful more people will sign up.

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Professor Alison Layton, Associate Director for Research at Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, said: "We are delighted to be a site for this important national study in Harrogate.

"This will provide our patients the opportunity to have access to treatments which may be helpful in the treatment of covid-19 and will contribute to understanding about the best treatments to tackle the virus."

The study aims to find effective treatment for covid-19 by testing pre-existing medicines.

These includes steroids, antivirals, antimalarial agents and antibiotics, with the trial also including an adaptive design that enables other potentially useful treatments to be quickly introduced for investigation.

Nationally, more than 9,000 coronavirus patients have volunteered to take part in the trail.

Separate trials are being set up around the world, but none have had as many participants as the UK programme.

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The first results the clinical trial could be available before the end of June, according to an NHS letter from chief medical officers.

The letter said: “As new admissions fall due to the success of social/physical distancing measures it will become even more important that a high proportion of patients with covid-19 are enrolled on to trials if we are to improve future treatment.

“If we can keep recruitment for Recovery high, above 1,000 patients per week, we could have answers on some treatments in five to seven weeks. This will allow us to move successful drugs into routine care.”

By Jacob Webster, Local Democracy Reporter

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