The University of Zaragoza invests eleven online doctors in the state of alarm
8 June, 2020
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9 June, 2020- Of the 300.000 people expected to participate globally in studies on Covid-19, more than 25.000 correspond to patients in Spanish hospitals, which represents 8,5% of the total
- Only the United Kingdom (86.000) and the United States (71.000) plan to recruit more patients for their clinical trials, according to data managed by the WHO.
- From now on, according to experts, it will be more difficult to include new patients in our country's trials due to the improvement in the pandemic situation.
Spain's role as a reference country in the world in carrying out clinical trials with new medicines has been evident in the current research race to confront Covid-19. According to data managed by the World Health Organization (WHO), our country is currently third in the world (only behind the United Kingdom and the United States) in terms of patient participation in clinical trials with medications that prove their effectiveness. against SARS-CoV-2. Spain was already in the lead in calculating the number of trials launched on coronavirus - without taking into account the number of patients -, as stated in the previous information from Farmaindustria on May 5. At that time, our country was the first country in Europe in the number of trials and the fourth in the world.
Now, the figures – which can be consulted at this link as of June 2 – indicate that there are a total of 556 clinical trials around the world that have already begun and in which up to 300.099 people will participate. In the case of Spain, there are exactly 25.227 patients who will be included in the 76 trials that have already begun in our country, which represents close to 8,5% of the total and places our country in third place in the world after the United Kingdom. United Kingdom, with 86.702 patients and 32 trials started, and the USA, with 71.710 patients planned in 97 trials already underway. The fourth country with the most patients planned in trials that have already begun to operate is France, with 20.290 patients in 41 studies, according to data from this project, called Covid-19-living NMA, and which is the source used by the WHO in their information.
To all this data we should also add that of trials that are planned but not yet underway. According to the information collected by the aforementioned Covid-19-living NMA project -led by experts from the Cochrane Library-, there would be another 423 clinical trials in which another 222.105 people would participate. Of these, 16 studies that are already approved and in which another 4.196 patients would participate would correspond to Spain. Our country would thus add a total of 29.423 patients. The figure coincides with what the Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, transmitted at the time, when speaking about the importance of clinical trials on coronavirus in our country and where he thanked the “important donations” of medicines made by the pharmaceutical industry to support these. essays.
Despite the good figures in Spain, from now on there is a paradox, as pointed out by Amelia Martín Uranga, head of the Farmaindustria Innovative Medicines Platform, “that many of the EECCs launched were aimed at seriously ill or critical, and those, fortunately, are the ones we currently have the least of.” According to her, some of the international trials that pharmaceutical companies carry out in our country will have an easier time continuing their research by recruiting patients from now on in countries where the pandemic now has its main focus, such as Brazil, Russia or the United States.
