Infectious Diseases

This is the remarkable story of how the UK’s Recovery Trial saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Covid patients.

It was set up in nine days, after a conversation on the number 18 bus. Within 100 days it had found the first life-saving drug. This trial has united thousands of doctors, the NHS and 40,000 patients, at the scariest moments of their lives, changing the pandemic, and possibly medicine, forever.

We speak to Oxford professors Martin Landray and Peter Horby who devised the Recovery Trial, and to some of the doctors and patients who helped make it happen.

PRESENTER: James Gallagher PRODUCERS: Geraldine Fitzgerald & Beth Eastwood