Beautiful Virgin Islands

Wednesday, Oct 08, 2025

World Health Organisation warns countries not to treat Covid-19 patients with unproven medicine amid scramble for a cure

History of medicine abounds with ‘examples of drugs that worked on paper or in a test tube but were actually harmful’, WHO chief says. Warning comes as cases of the respiratory ailment caused by the coronavirus surge worldwide

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Friday warned governments against treating infected coronavirus patients with medications not scientifically proven to fight the pathogen.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued the warning as cases of Covid-19, the respiratory ailment caused by the coronavirus that emerged in China late last year, surged worldwide, prompting health authorities to scramble to find treatments.

“We call on all individuals and countries to refrain from using therapeutics that have not been demonstrated to be effective in the treatment of Covid-19,” Tedros said. “The history of medicine is strewn with examples of drugs that worked on paper, or in a test tube, but didn't work in humans, or were actually harmful.”

“During the most recent Ebola epidemic, for example, some medicines that were thought to be effective were found not to be as effective as other medicines, when they were compared during a clinical trial,” he said. “We must follow the evidence. There are no short cuts.”

Tedros did not name any individuals, including US President Donald Trump, who came under criticism for touting chloroquine – a medicine for malaria – as a treatment for Covid-19 patients.

Trump defended his aim to start using the medicine regardless of the WHO warning.

Asked in a White House briefing about whether he would continue pushing chloroquine as a treatment, Trump said: “We have people dying now.”

“If we're going to go into labs and test all of this for a long time, we can test it on people right now who are in serious trouble who would dying,” Trump said. “If it works, we've done a great thing. If it doesn't work, you know, we tried.”

The US leader began pushing for chloroquine as a treatment last week.

In a press briefing on March 19, Trump, referring to the medication, said: “Normally the [US Food and Drug Administration] would take a long time to approve something like that, and it was approved very, very quickly and it's now approved, by prescription.”

Soon after Trump’s comments, the FDA said that chloroquine had not been approved for treating Covid-19 and that more tests were needed to determine its safety and effectiveness.

A day later, US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said evidence that chloroquine worked against Sars-CoV-2, the scientific name for the new coronavirus, was “anecdotal”.

The effort to prove the medication’s efficacy against the contagion, he said, “was not done in a controlled clinical trial, so you really can’t make any definitive statement about it”.

Many US media outlets have reported shortages of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, a newer derivative of chloroquine that is also used for malaria, since Covid-19 cases began to surge in the country.

Tedros also warned that “off-label” usage of medication – the prescribing of sanctioned drugs for other, unapproved purposes – to treat Covid-19 potentially threatens the health of many individuals not infected with the new illness.

“We need to ensure that using unproven drugs does not create a shortage of those medicines to treat diseases for which they have proven effective,” the head of the UN agency said in the briefing.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×