WHO starts testing COVID-19 medicines
March 29, 2020 07:00 pm
As global COVID-19 cases exceeded half a million on Friday, the World Health Organization urged countries to continue their fight against the pandemic while tests on drugs are underway.
WHO director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has announced the launch of SOLIDARITY, a giant multinational trial of using four general treatments to test different therapies in an effort to defeat COVID-19 sooner.
Dr. Ghebreyesus noted that in the reality where creating a vaccine against Covid-19 will take 12 to 18 months, the international society has to join forces and implement trials and researchers to find the most effective treatment for the novel coronavirus.
“I’m glad that many countries have joined the SOLIDARITY trial that will help us to move with speed and volume. The more countries that sign up to the SOLIDARITY trial and other large studies, the faster we will get results on which drugs work, and the more lives we will be able to save,” Dr. Ghebreyesus has said.
Forty-five countries are already participating and many more states have expressed their desire to take part.
Patients in Norway and Spain will soon become participants of SOLIDARITY, said the WHO director-general.
-Agencies
