BRADFORD health experts have weighed in on how Covid-19 could be beaten as the city's hospital joins a "huge international effort" to find treatments.

Professor John Wright, an epidemiologist and director of the Bradford Institute for Health Research, which is based at the Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) has been sharing his insights from the hospital throughout the coronavirus crisis.

The BRI is participating in eight different clinical trials to try and find a cure for Covid-19.

In his latest diary for the BBC, he said: "We are part of a huge international effort. It feels like all the light of global science has been concentrated into a laser beam directed at this almost invisible virus.

"The biggest of the trials we are involved in is the Recovery trial. Already more than 10,000 patients have been recruited nationwide and are taking either a placebo or one of a number of other drugs.

"Last week at BRI we recruited the first patient in the UK for a small trial to test whether a new drug made by AstraZeneca is safe and effective. This is one of a number of small trials - jointly referred to as the Accord trial - designed to assess further drugs that may be added to the Recovery trial.

"The hope is that this AstraZeneca drug, which does not yet have a name, will help to damp down a dangerous overreaction of the immune system that occurs in a small proportion of patients, sending the body into shock and closing down vital organs, such as the lungs, heart, blood vessels and kidney.

"I suspect that a vaccine for Covid-19 is still a year away, so these trials searching for treatments are critical."

Professor Wright says it seems "increasingly unlikely" that one single drug will cure Covid-19.

He said: "It's through combinations of drugs that in the past we have beaten TB - with a combination of antibiotics - and HIV - with a combination of antiretrovirals - and I expect it will be the way we beat this illness too."

Dr Dinesh Saralaya, respiratory consultant at the BRI, feels optimistic that a combination treatment will be available before the end of summer.

He said: "I think we'll find at least two or three drugs which will prevent these patients ever needing to come into hospital.

"You will go to the test centre and then be given the drugs once you're diagnosed. Under the current strategies, you get the Covid virus, so you're isolating, then you get worse, you get a temperature, you start getting breathless, then you come in. But people need to be given the drugs very early."

Another consultant at the hospital is potentially contributing to another trial - as a donor of antibodies.

Dr Debbie Horner caught Covid-19 at a very early stage of the outbreak and quickly recovered.

When a call went out for people like her to donate blood plasma, she immediately agreed.

Researchers want to find out whether antibody-rich plasma from people who have had Covid-19 will help other patients fight off the disease.

Professor Wright said: "It's now been discovered that the patients most likely to have high levels of antibodies are men over the age of 35 who became so ill they needed hospital treatment. NHS Blood and Transplant is keen to recruit donors who have recovered from Covid-19 and who are either male, or are over 35, or were ill enough to be hospitalised. Debbie had a mild case so it is possible that her plasma is not as rich in antibodies as the team would like. The results have yet to come in. If her plasma is wanted she will happily donate more."