No approved treatments yet for COVID-19: WHO

Geneva: The World Health Organization (WHO) said that a number of treatments are under clinical trials for the treatment of COVID-19, but none of those was yet approved.

"There are hundreds of clinical trials that are underway, and the reason we need to wait for the results of these studies is because they are evaluating how these medicines, how these drugs work, in terms of either preventing infection, preventing someone from progressing to severe disease, preventing death and how safe they are, do they have any side effects," Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for the WHO's Health Emergencies Program, said on Friday in a press conference in Geneva, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Right now, WHO has launched the 'Solidarity Trial' which is a clinical trial focusing on some drugs, some therapeutics, to look at whether or not these are safe and effective for COVID-19. There are more than 2,500 patients enrolled in this multi-site clinical trial," she said.

"And it will take some time before we have full answers to which treatments work, but right now we don't have any approved treatments for COVID-19," she added.

Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, stressed the importance of proper process to ensure safety.

"And there's a very very well tested process of doing this, so it's really important that we encourage innovation, we encourage people to be looking for solutions, but then as those solutions potentially become available, we need to put them through the proper process in the interest of safety, in the interest of efficacy and in order to make sure that we first do no harm," he said.