British scientists halted a major drug trial on Friday after it found that the anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine, touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as a potential "game changer" in the pandemic, was "useless" at treating COVID-19 patients. It doesn't work," Martin Landray, an Oxford University professor who is co-leading the RECOVERY trial, told reporters. He said the preliminary results from RECOVERY, which was a randomized trial, were now quite clear: hydroxychloroquine does not reduce the risk of death among hospitalized patients with COVID-19. No difference in death ratesThe RECOVERY trial of hydroxychloroquine had randomly assigned 1,542 COVID-19 patients to hydroxychloroquine and compared them with 3,132 COVID-19 patients randomly assigned to standard care without the drug. (Hannah McKay/Reuters/Pool)The Oxford study is the largest so far to put hydroxychloroquine to a strict test.

Source: CBC News June 05, 2020 21:11 UTC