India’s health ministry on Saturday approved for the treatment of Covid-19 an inexpensive steroid called dexamethasone, which a UK study has found to reduce the risk of death among patients with the infection’s respiratory complications.

The ministry, in revised Covid-19 clinical management guidelines, said doctors may use dexamethasone as an alternative to methylprednisolone to treat patients with moderate and severe disease. But it also advised caution in the use of the drug.

The treatment guidelines warn that a large dose of the steroid could delay the removal of the coronavirus because of its immunosuppressive effects.

Medical researchers at the University of Oxford had reported this month that dexamethasone had reduced deaths by a third among Covid-19 patients on ventilator, and by a fifth among patients only on oxygen, but did not benefit patients who did not require respiratory support.

Their report, based on a clinical trial in the UK, has not yet been peer-reviewed.

The health ministry said it was introducing dexamethasone in the treatment of Covid-19 “after considering the latest available evidence and expert consultation”.

The ministry has forwarded the updated guidelines to all the states and Union Territories and posted them on its website for use by medical practitioners across the country.

A Covid-19 patient with less than a 94 per cent oxygen reading and a respiration rate of 24 or more breaths per minute would be classified as having moderate disease. A patient with less than 90 per cent oxygen and a respiration rate of 30 or more would be classified as having severe disease.

India on Saturday recorded a fresh single-day high of 18,552 cases, which increased the number of patients under medical supervision to 197,387. The total number of infections is 508,953, of whom 295,881 patients have recovered and 15,685 have died.

Eight states — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Telangana, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Bengal — currently account for 85 per cent of the active patients and 87 per cent of the deaths, health officials told a group of ministers meeting on Covid-19 on Saturday.

The officials told the GoM that all the states and Union Territories had been asked to continue with strict containment measures and surveillance, ensure seamless hospital admission processes, mitigate fatalities through effective clinical management and predict emerging hotspots.

Balram Bhargava, director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research, told the GoM that India now had 741 government labs and 285 private labs offering Covid-19 diagnostic tests. These labs collectively tested 220,479 samples over the past 24 hours, raising the aggregate number of samples tested in India to over 7.99 million.

The country now has 1,038 dedicated Covid-19 hospitals and 2,398 Covid-19 health centres with over 315,000 isolation beds, 128,000 beds with oxygen support and nearly 34,000 intensive care unit beds.

In addition, the health ministry said, more than 810,000 isolation beds are available at Covid-19 care centres, meant primarily to isolate patients with no symptoms or only mild symptoms who cannot be isolated at their homes.