Northern Ireland participants sought for study into covid treatments

The PANORAMIC study, run by the University of Oxford, alongside the Northern Ireland Clinical Research Network (NICRN) has been running across the UK since December 2021 aiming to find out if new antiviral medicines help to keep people with COVID-19 from needing to be admitted to hospital and help people to get better sooner.

The study is open to adults over the age of 50 or those aged 18 to 49 with an underlying health condition that can increase the risk of developing severe COVID-19, who have received a positive COVID-19 test result, and who are experiencing symptoms that started in the previous five days.

Previously the first stage of the PANORAMIC study recruited over 25,000 participants across the UK with over 1000 participants from Northern Ireland.

This made the study the fastest recruiting clinical trial ever in the UK and a novel initiative that has paved the path for how research can be conducted in primary care. The data from the trial is important to help understand how to make best use of antiviral medicines for the treatment of COVID-19.

In this latest phase of the study an additional antiviral, Paxlovid, is now being investigated.

Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Michael McBride said: “While vaccination remains our main defence against COVID-19, we must continually look at any treatments that could help people recover more quickly, reduce the numbers needing hospital care and reduce the pressure on our health services."