Hundreds of critically ill coronavirus patients to get arthritis drug in NHS trial

Experts are also testing four other promising treatments, including HIV, malaria and antibiotic drugs.

Martin Landray, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Nuffield Department of Population Health at Oxford, told : "The transition between just having a nasty viral infection and needing ventilation is accompanied by this hyper-inflammatory response.

"There's good grounds for believing that if we can block that, then this might reduce the risk of going on to ventilation or dying.

"The drug has been used on quite large numbers of people in places like Italy, but it was done willy-nilly — so at the end of the day you have no idea whether it did any good, or indeed whether it did any harm."

Reduces inflammation

Tocilizumab works by reducing levels of IL-6 protein in the body, which can cause inflammation and damage.

The protein is usually found in abundance in those with rheumatoid arthritis or other autoimmune conditions.

Now researchers hope that it will also help to calm a dangerous immune response that often contributes to coronavirus deaths.

Chinese doctors are reported to have given tocilizumab to a sample of patients during the peak of the outbreak and say nearly all were discharged from hospital within a fortnight.

Beijing has already approved the “wonder drug” to treat coronavirus sufferers with serious lung damage caused by the inflammation.

And the Federal Drugs Administration in the US has already given the go-ahead for trials to be carried out on patients.

It comes after experts at Oxford University said a coronavirus vaccine could be just weeks away.

Professor Sarah Gilbert, who is working on a vaccine with a team at the university, is about to begin testing the vaccine, is confident it will work and says it could be ready by September.

The drug is set to be tested in a six-month trial of 510 volunteers in the Thames Valley region with the progress so far being described as "astonishing".

Currently, there is no vaccine for Covid-19 but doctors across the globe are testing current anti-viral drugs to see if they can beat coronavirus.

Last month, scientists claimed an anti-tuberculous vaccine that was given to thousands of British schoolchildren could protect against coronavirus.