Hydroxychloroquine being tested for COVID-19

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi

(Pakistan News & Features Services)

As the world waits impatiently for a COVID-19 vaccine, the Pakistani arm of the largest global study to test if hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine can prevent COVID-19 in vital healthcare workers has begun enrolling participants at Aga Khan University in Karachi on October 28. 

The study, COPCOV, is a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial which is considered to be the most robust method to prove the efficacy of a drug. 

The trial will see half of participants given hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine while the other half will receive a placebo. Selection will be at random.

In order to eliminate the chance of bias, neither study participants nor the administrators of the trial will know which group is receiving the drug or the placebo. Used for over 60 years to treat malaria, amoebic liver abscess and other diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine has been shown in the laboratory to kill the novel coronavirus. 

The AKU is the first centre outside of the UK to be participating in the study led by the University of Oxford in the UK and Wellcome-supported Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) in Bangkok, Thailand. 

Although there is increasing evidence that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine could work as a form of preventive medicine for COVID-19 rather than when a person gets sick as the researchers are still not sure. 

“I don’t know if hydroxychloroquine can prevent COVID-19 or not. But I do know that we really need to find out, and quickly. We could be waiting a long time for an effective vaccine,” one of COPCOV’s co-principal investigators, Professor Sir Nick White, remarked. 

“If there is a chance that it can offer valuable protection against COVID-19 its imperative that the study finds out if it does,” Professor Asim Beg, the COPCOV’s principal investigator in Pakistan, added. 

The Pakistan COPCOV site at the AKU is the first site outside the UK, joining five COPCOV sites operating in the UK. COPCOV is the only non-vaccine COVID prophylaxis study deemed to be of urgent public health importance by the UK’s NIHR Clinical Research Network. 

In Pakistan, the study is being supported by AKU’s doctors Farah Qamar, Faisal Mahmood, Noshin Nasir, Momin Qazi and Sonia Qureshi as well as Professor Saeed Hamid, director of AKU’s Clinical Trials Unit.