In Wednesday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, medical researchers reported on testing the use of hydroxychloroquine in 821 adults in the U.S. and in Quebec, Manitoba and Alberta. The participants did not have symptoms but were exposed to someone with confirmed COVI9-19 in a health-care or household setting. The drug did not help prevent people from developing the disease, the trial results suggest.
"What we found out is that the drug was not effective at preventing symptoms of the COVID-19 disease, or the disease itself," Dr. Ryan Zarychanski, co-principal investigator of the clinical trial and a hematologist and critical care physician at the U of M and CancerCare Manitoba, told CTV News.
"This is not a failure per se, this is the successful completion of the trial; the resolution of a hypothesis with intention to move on and complete the other trials that we've started."
The World Health Organization said it is resuming a clinical trial testing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment after pausing it over safety concerns.