A 14-YEAR-OLD boy has survived coronavirus after doctors treated him with the Ebola drug remdesivir which is set to be approved in the UK.
Jacob Tayel, from Ipswich, was left fighting for his life after he contracted the deadly bug sweeping the UK.
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And while his family initially thought it was a chest infection, the teen's condition continued to worsen - as did that of his little brother, 11-year-old Isaac.
Mum Dianne Tayel told BBC Breakfast said she had feared the worst when he son was transferred from Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge to Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) and was diagnosed with coronavirus.
But the mum said she had been given hope when her teen son was treated with remdesivir.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has previously dubbed the drug - previously used to treat ebola -as "the most promising" treatment for Covid-19 among all the other medicines being studied in trials.
She said today: "We thought we'd lost him, so we thought it was the end and we felt like we were being prepared for that.
"When he got to GOSH, within about 12 or 13 hours the infection team had made contact with me and started to talk to me about the possibility of remdesivir, then I felt a bit more hope at this point.
"Both my husband and I were just grateful and really astounded that so many people of such calibre were having these conversations about Jacob to make him well."
Doctors treating Jacob decided to try remdesivir - getting permission from the pharmaceutical company and hospital on compassionate grounds as the teen's condition worsened.
And thankfully, Jacob woke up from his coma - and both he and brother Isaac are back to full health.
Dianne said: "We thank God every day that we were able to get our boys back."
The news comes as the head of the European Union's medicines agency Guido Rasi revealed today that an initial authorisation for US pharmaceutical company Gilead's remdesivir as a Covid-19 treatment could be granted in the coming days.
This could mean that Brits with coronavirus may soon be treated with the experimental antiviral drug.
Dr Karyn Moshal, one of the consultants in paediatric infectious diseases at GOSH who helped to treat Jacob said the drug had been used to bring down the teen's viral load.
She said they presented the case to the pharmaceutical company and hospital to both give permission as the drug was experimental.
Dr Moshal said: "We had to weigh up the risk benefit of using a drug which is essentially an investigational drug, what is known as the compassionate use drug."
She explained that the drug worked because doctors were able to decrease the inflammation that was driven by his increased viral load.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has already recommended the compassionate use of remdesivir, which allows a drug to be administered to patients even before it has been fully authorised.
Apart from remdesivir, Rasi said other possible treatments against Covid-19 that may be available fast are those based on monoclonal antibodies, which can "neutralize" the new coronavirus (Sars-CoV-2) that causes the illness Covid-19.
Remdesivir was initially created as a potential treatment for Ebola.
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It was quickly pushed through clinical trials during the West African outbreak of 2013-15, after showing promising results in the lab, and was then rolled out more widely in affected areas of Africa.
It comes as Business Secretary Alok Sharma announced that a global licensing deal had been signed between Oxford University and drugs giant AstraZeneca as part of a £130million plan to vaccinate half the UK population.
The pharma firm will make 30 million doses of the Oxford coronavirus vaccine by September if it works - and the UK will be the first to get it.
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