WHO: COVID-19, Ebola Update

A File Picture of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO)~***UN Photo/Elma Okic***

The World Health Organization (WHO) on 3 Jun announced that it will resume clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 after a pause.

WHO’s Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said the Executive Group of the Solidarity Trial had last week decided to implement a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm of the trial, “because of concerns raised about the safety of the drug.”

Dr. Tedros said that after a review of the available mortality data, “the members of the committee recommended that there are no reasons to modify the trial protocol” and the Executive Group has endorsed “the continuation of all arms of the Solidarity Trial, including hydroxychloroquine.”

The WHO’s Chief Scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, said, “we’re still talking about a clinical trial, that’s testing this drug for its efficacy and safety among patients are hospitalized with COVID infection. We make recommendations for the use routine use of a drug based on evidence, we have a process, we set up a guideline development group. It reviews all the evidence. Systematic reviews are done of both randomized trials and other kinds of evidence that are available. And based on all of that, who then recommends the use of a drug or a strategy for a particular disease, this is the standard process.”

Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus told reporters that “more than 100,000 cases of COVID-19 have been reported to WHO for each of the past five days, “adding that “the Americas continues to account for the most cases.” He expressed particular concern about Central and South America, “where many countries are witnessing accelerating epidemics.”

WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme Executive Director, Michael Ryan, said there is “continued intense community transmission in places like Peru and Brazil. “

Ryan said, “each and every region or sub-region in a slightly different way, but what has been common to many regions has been intense community transmission, and it is clear that once that intense community transmission has been established, it’s very difficult to root the virus out.”

Turning to the new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Dr. Tedros said, “WHO is continuing to respond to the new Ebola outbreak in the city of Mbandaka, in the Equateur province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So far, eight cases have been detected. Four of those have died and the other four are receiving care. To be clear, this outbreak is in the same area as a previous outbreak in 2018, which was stopped in just three months. However, it is on the other side of the country to the Ebola outbreak that WHO and partners have been fighting for almost two years in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri, in eastern DRC.

He said, “the latest person confirmed with Ebola attended the burial of one of the first cases, but was detected in the town of Bikoro, 150 kilometres away from Mbandaka. This means that two health zones are now affected. Today almost 50 responders from WHO and partners arrived in Mbandaka, plus 3600 doses of Ebola vaccine and 2,000 cartridges for lab testing. The government is now sequencing the virus to see whether or not it is related to a previous outbreak.”

The Ebola outbreak in Mbandaka marks the DRC’s eleventh face-off with the deadly disease, which was first discovered in the country in 1976 and is now endemic.

~WHO