The World Health Organisation (WHO) has welcomed the results of dexamethasone, a steroid drug described as a major ‘breakthrough’ for treating critically Covid-19 patients.

"This is the first treatment to be shown to reduce mortality in patients with Covid-19 requiring oxygen or ventilator support,” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said in a statement.

WHO address comes after study results announced on Tuesday, showed that the cheap and widely-used steroid has become the first drug shown to be able to save lives among Covid-19 patients.

As a result, researchers who led the study appealed that the drug should immediately become standard care in patients treated in hospital with the pandemic disease.

The WHO clinical guidance will be updated to reflect how and when the drug should be used in Covid-19.

"The researchers shared initial insights about the results of the trial with WHO, and we are looking forward to the full data analysis in the coming days. WHO will coordinate a meta-analysis to increase our overall understanding of this intervention,” added Dr Tedros.

Dexamethasone (also known as dexamed), is a steroid that has been used since the 1960s. It is usually used to reduce inflammation in treating diseases such as arthritis, WHO said in a statement.

It has been listed on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines since 1977 in multiple formulations, and is currently off-patent and affordably available in most countries, according to the statement.

In the trial, the drug was found to reduce death rates by around a third among the most severely ill of Covid-19 patients admitted to the hospital.

However, the benefit was only seen in patients seriously ill with Covid-19, and was not observed in patients with milder disease.