Hydroxychloroquine is not recommended for the prevention of COVID-19 infection, The BMJ reported referring to the World Health Organization guidelines.

WHO has shared active guidelines on various COVID-19 aspects.

The new WHO recommendations are based on evidence from 6 studies involving more than 6,000 people. About half of the participants took hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19 with or without contact with infected people. The experts made the following conclusions:

  • hydroxychloroquine has no significant effect on mortality and hospitalization (high level of evidence);
  • hydroxychloroquine has no significant effect on the development of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 (moderate evidence);
  • taking hydroxychloroquine appears to be associated with side effects in study participants.

WHO experts believe that people should not take hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19, regardless of whether they had contact with an infected person or not. The organization is also sure that scientists should no longer spend energy on studying the effectiveness of this drug in the prevention of COVID-19 infection.