World Health Organization halts hydroxychloroquine trials

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that it stopped testing the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as part of the multi-country Solidarity Trial because it had shown no effect. 

"The internal evidence from the Solidarity discovery trial, the external evidence from the Recovery trial, and the combined evidence from these large randomized trials bring together, suggest that hydroxychloroquine, when compared with the standard of care in the treatment of hospitalized COVID patients, does not result in the reduction of the mortality of those patients," said Ana Maria Henao Restrepo, Medical Officer of WHO's Department of Immunization Vaccines and Biologicals, at a press conference in Geneva.