News > WHO panel issues strong advice against hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19

WHO panel issues strong advice against hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19

The drug hydroxychloroquine, once touted by Donald Trump as a pandemic "game-changer", should not be used to prevent COVID-19 and has no meaningful effect on patients already infected, a World Health Organization expert panel said on Tuesday. This "strong recommendation", the experts said, is based on high-certainty evidence from six randomised controlled trials involving more than 6,000 participants both with and without known exposure to COVID-19. "The panel considers that this drug is no longer a research priority and that resources should rather be oriented to evaluate other more promising drugs to prevent COVID-19," they wrote.