UK healthcare workers begin Covid-19 hydroxychloroquine trial

London, May 21

British healthcare employees will on Thursday start participating in a University of Oxford-led worldwide trial of two anti-malarial medicine to see if they’ll stop COVID-19, together with one US President Donald Trump says he has been taking.

The ‘COPCOV’ research will contain greater than 40,000 frontline healthcare employees from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America to find out if chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are efficient in stopping the novel coronavirus.

Demand for hydroxychloroquine surged after Trump touted it in early April. Earlier this week the US chief mentioned he was now taking the drug as a preventive drugs in opposition to the virus regardless of medical warnings about its use.

The trial, led by the University of Oxford with the assist of the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) in Bangkok, will open to British members at hospital websites in Brighton and Oxford on Thursday and contain those that are in shut contact with sufferers with confirmed or suspected COVID-19.

“We really do not know if chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine are beneficial or harmful against COVID-19,” mentioned the University of Oxford’s Professor Nicholas White, the research’s co-principal investigator, who relies at MORU.

“The best way to find out if they are effective in preventing COVID-19 is in a randomised clinical trial.”

The COPCOV crew mentioned laboratory proof confirmed the anti-malarial medicine is perhaps efficient in stopping or treating COVID-19 however there was no conclusive proof.

US regulators have licensed the emergency use of hydroxlychloroquine for coronavirus sufferers however the US Food and Drug Administration has warned in opposition to using it in COVID-19 sufferers outdoors of the hospital or medical trials because of the threat of great coronary heart rhythm issues.

“These trials will give us the best understanding of how safe and effective these drugs might be across different populations and age groups,” mentioned Nick Cammack, COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator Lead on the Wellcome Trust, a UK-based medical analysis charity which helps to fund the trial.

“If, and only if, they are effective, these drugs can be scaled up and rolled out quickly across the world.”

In Britain, Europe and Africa members will obtain both hydroxychloroquine or a placebo for 3 months. In Asia they’ll obtain both chloroquine or a placebo.

A complete of 25 research websites are anticipated to be open within the UK by the top of June, MORU mentioned, with plans for additional websites in Thailand and Southeast Asia, Italy, Portugal, Africa and South America. The outcomes are anticipated by the top of this 12 months.

“We are looking at this with great care and examining all of the evidence that is out there,” Britain’s safety minister James Brokenshire advised Sky News. — Reuters