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The World Health Organization says it is temporarily halting its clinical trials that use hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID -19 patients over published concerns that the drug may do more harm than good. The move comes after the medical journal The Lancet reported on Friday May 22 that patients getting hydroxychloroquine were dying at higher rates than other coronavirus patients. The WHO has 3,500 patients from 17 countries enrolled in what it calls the Solidarity Trial. This is an effort overseen by the WHO to find new treatments for COVID -19. READ MORE

The director of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (Nafdac), Mojisola Adeyeye, has disclosed that clinical trails for virus treatment using chloroquine will continue despite a recent move by the  WHO to suspend a similar trial over safety concerns. She told a local broadcaster that even though Nafdac did not dispute WHO ’s conclusions, the decision to continue with the trial was in order to generate their own data. “I do not know the data that they’re looking at, whether it’s from the Caucasian population or from the African population. If the data they’re looking at and the reason for suspending the trials is from Caucasian population, then it may be justified. “But I don’t think we have data from the African population yet, because our genetic make up is different,” she added. Lagos State had announced last week that trials were to start with the anti-malarial drug. READ MORE

Algerian authorities have vowed they will not give up on the controversial use of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment against coronavirus, despite the decision of the World Health Organization ( WHO ) to suspend clinical trials, a member of the Pandemic Monitoring Committee said Tuesday. “We have treated thousands of cases with this drug with great success to date. And we have not noted any adverse reactions,” Dr. Mohamed Bekkat, a member of the Scientific Committee monitoring the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic in Algeria, told AFP . “We have not recorded any deaths related to the use of (hydroxy)chloroquine,” said Dr. Bekkat, also president of the Council of the Algerian Medical Association. READ MORE