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The World Health Organization decided Wednesday to halt trials of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for hospitalised Covid-19 patients, finding it did not reduce the mortality rate.
A decades-old malaria and rheumatoid arthritis drug, hydroxychloroquine has been at the centre of political and scientific controversy.
It has been touted as a possible treatment for the new coronavirus by high profile figures, including US President Donald Trump.
The drug has been included in several randomised clinical trials -- considered the gold standard for clinical investigation -- but the WHO said the evidence had led the UN health agency to call time on its own trials.
Doctor Ana Maria Henao Restrepo, from the WHO's health emergencies programme, told a virtual press conference in Geneva that it was being withdrawn from its multi-country Solidarity Trial of a range of potential treatments.
"The internal evidence from the Solidarity/Discovery Trial, the external evidence from the Recovery Trial and the combined evidence from these large randomised trials, brought together, suggest that hydroxychloroquine -- when compared with the standard of care in the treatment of hospitalised Covid-19 patients -- does not result in the reduction of the mortality of those patients," she said.
"Based on this analysis and on the review of the published evidence, the Executive Group of the Solidarity/Recovery Trial has met on two occasions and today we met with all the principal investigators.
"After deliberation, they have concluded that the hydroxychloroquine arm will be stopped from the Solidarity Trial."
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