Australia’s current COVID-19 treatment options, and why the national death rate is so high

As Australia’s vaccine rollout eases — slowly — into its second phase, experts are pausing to reflect on how far we’ve come with COVID-19 treatments and what the prospects are for saving more lives.

US-based Craig Rayner sits on the World Health Organization’s therapeutics committee for COVID-19.

“From a global view, we started off really with a mad dash to look for anything that we could re-purpose,” said Dr Rayner, who is the president of integrated drug development at the company Certara.

Steven Tong is an infectious disease expert with Australia’s Doherty Institute and one of the principal investigators in a trial gathering evidence on COVID-19 treatments.

He…