Novartis has made the decision to stop and discontinue its sponsored HCQ clinical trial for COVID-19 due to acute enrollment challenges that have made trial completion infeasible.
 
The Swiss pharma giant said recruitment challenge facing the HCQ trial wouldn’t allow its clinical team to be able to collect meaningful data in a reasonable timeframe to determine the effectiveness of HCQ in treating patients with COVID-19.
 
No safety issues have been reported, and there are no conclusions on efficacy from the study.
 
Novartis said it will continue to provide supply of HCQ for ongoing investigator-initiated trials (IITs) and upon government requests, as appropriate, where certain conditions are met and the medicine is used in accordance with a nationally endorsed treatment protocol. Researchers at Novartis continue to monitor ongoing guidance from health authorities on the further study of HCQ for COVID-19, as well as the decision by the U.S. FDA to stop the emergency use authorization of HCQ for COVID-19 treatment.