WHO Says Early Clinical Trials Showing “Potentially Positive Data” for COVID-19 Treatments

The World Health Organization (WHO) said this week that “potentially positive data” is coming out of early clinical trials of COVID-19 treatments, but it declined to name the specific drugs showing promise.

The WHO’s multiarmed and multinational trial, SOLIDARITY, is researching multiple drugs, including remdesivir, chloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir and the drug combo with interferon beta.

The early data show that some of the drugs seem to be limiting the virus’ severity and length, Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for the WHO, said. But she declined to elaborate, saying more research is needed to tell if the treatments are effective.

“We do have potentially positive data coming out, but we need to see more data to be 100 percent confident to say this treatment over that treatment,” she said. “We’re comparing four or five of the candidate treatments that are looking potentially positive, but we want to see if there really is a big difference in the effect. We’ll only know that by looking at large numbers of people in different countries, different settings.” — James Miessler