WHO Halts Hydroxychloroquine Testing Over Safety Concerns

A paper published in The Lancet reported that hospitalized COVID-19 patients taking the drug had a higher risk of death, although some researchers have raised questions about the data.

Written byCatherine Offord

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Update (June 18): The World Health Organization announced yesterday that it was dropping hydroxychloroquine from the Solidarity trial after new data suggest the drug is ineffective as a COVID-19 treatment or prophylaxis. A study published June 3 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the drug did not prevent people exposed to SARS-CoV-2 from becoming sick, while findings released in a press statement from the UK RECOVERY trial on June 5 indicate that the drug does not improve survival or reduce hospital stay duration in COVID-19 patients.

Update (June 3): The World Health Organization today announced that it would be resuming hydroxychloroquine testing in its Solidarity Trial, following widespread criticism of The Lancet paper and the dataset it was based on.

The World Health Organization has suspended testing of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine after a study published in The Lancet reported that COVID-19 ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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