WHO Rejects Hydroxychloroquine for Preventing COVID-19

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) guideline development group has issued a strong recommendation against using the anti-inflammatory malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19 infection.

The expert panel said it derived its recommendation from six trials enrolling more than 6,000 participants, where it found no “meaningful effect on death and admission to hospital” while evidence “showed that hydroxychloroquine had no meaningful effect on laboratory confirmed COVID-19 infection and it probably increases the risk of adverse effects.” The WHO published its findings in the BMJ.

In March 2020, the FDA controversially granted hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), before withdrawing the EUA after finding the drugs ineffective against the coronavirus and, even worse, potentially dangerous as they caused serious cardiac arrest in some COVID-19 patients.