4 July 2020. ABC News: The World Health Organization said it expects interim results on a potential coronavirus treatment drug — not a vaccine — within two weeks.
“The group reviewed data from the solidarity trial and agreed on the need for more trials to test different classes of therapeutics at different stages of the disease,” WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference Friday, adding that nearly 5,500 patients in 39 countries have been recruited for what’s been dubbed the “solidarity trial.”
“We expect interim result within the next two weeks,” Ghebreyesus added.
The solidarity trial began as a study of five drug candidates, including the Trump-touted hydroxychloroquine, on which testing was halted after no significant coronavirus-related benefited were discovered.
The head of the WHO’s Emergencies Program, Dr. Mike Ryan, said it would be “unwise at this point to predict when a vaccine could be rolled out.”
“Vaccines may have shown efficacy by the end of the year,” he added, “the question will be whether or not the scale of the production of those vaccines will be enough for us to begin vaccinating people early in 2021.”
