A healthcare worker of Asl Roma 1 holds a syringe after the vaccination of a resident with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Villa Verde elderly care home in Rome, as part of the coronavirus vaccination campaign in Italy, January 7, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane.

An Israeli treatment for patients suffering from severe cases of Covid-19 showed excellent results in its Phase 2 trials.

Israeli news site N12 reported that Israeli company Enlivex Therapeutics announced the results of the trials of its drug Allocetra on Wednesday.

Allocetra is intended to prevent the immune system from overreacting to the presence of a virus, a phenomenon referred to as a “cytokine storm,” which can cause more damage to the patient than the virus itself.

The trial was conducted on 16 patients, nine in serious condition and seven in critical condition. After 28 days of treatment, none of the patients have died, and 14 have been released from the hospital. The other two remain on supplementary oxygen in intensive care. The average time required for the treated patients to recover sufficiently to be discharged was 5.3 days.

As the global rollout of COVID-19 vaccine continues, research into therapeutics for people who have contracted the coronavirus remains a priority, with thousands of new cases counted every day in Israel and upwards of half a million daily cases worldwide.

In Phase 1 of the Allocetra trials, five patients recovered sufficiently to be discharged from the hospital.

Enlivex will submit the results to regulatory bodies in Europe, the US, and other countries in order to determine the direction of further trials.