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A cheap steroid that can help save the lives of patients with severe COVID-19 should be reserved for serious cases in which it has been shown to provide benefits, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said research was at last providing “green shoots of hope” in treating the virus, which has killed more than 400,000 people worldwide and infected more than 8 million. (Kelland and Farge, 6/17)

Signs of hope are starting to show in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, but it added that countries must continue to work on prevention measures to limit the spread of the new coronavirus. While cases are “still rapidly rising” in many regions of the world, there are “green shoots of hope”, the WHO’s Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an online media briefing. (6/17)

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the findings "very welcome news" during a media briefing Wednesday, but stressed that the drug should only be used in severe cases under close clinical supervision. "We will update our clinical guidance to reflect how and when dexamethasone should be used," Tedros said. (Miller, 6/17)

"We need more therapeutics that can be used to tackle the virus, including those with milder symptoms," he said. Based on the findings, he said the WHO is coordinating a meta-analysis to pool data from several clinical trials involving the steroid to increase its overall understanding of the intervention and will update its guidance on how and when dexamethasone should be used to treat COVID-19. In other comments during the briefing, he noted that the WHO and its partners have developed a new roadmap for neglected tropical diseases that moves single disease programs into a more integrated prevention, diagnosis, and treatment approach, with an eye toward universal health coverage. (Schnirring, 6/17)

Based on his own experience, Denson was excited when scientists at the University of Oxford in England announced this week that a clinical trial showed the steroid cut the death rate for hospitalized coronavirus patients by as much as a third. But Denson had reservations and questions as well. While the researchers announced promising results for the inexpensive and widely available drug, they have yet to release their full study and underlying data in a peer-reviewed medical journal. Amid the pandemic, many studies have been unveiled in a similarly hasty fashion. (Gallo, 6/17)

The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that testing of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine in its large multi-country trial of treatments for COVID-19 patients had been halted after new data and studies showed no benefit. WHO expert Ana Maria Henao-Restrepo said investigators leading the so-called Solidarity Trial testing the drug - which had been promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump - had reviewed recent evidence and decided to stop recruiting new patients. (Kelland and Farge, 6/17)

The decision to remove the drug from its Solidarity trial came following several events, Restrepo noted. A review of the evidence suggested there was “no apparent beneficial effect of hydroxychloroquine” to treat Covid-19. In addition, the results coming out of the U.K. last Friday indicated that there was no apparent effect on mortality or ventilation during a hospital stay. Finally, there was the Solidarity trial’s own evidence. (Furlong, 6/17)

Hydroxychloroquine gained attention as a potential COVID-19 treatment in February, when small studies suggested it might be useful against the virus. But subsequent research concluded that it was not beneficial. What's more, hydroxychloroquine is known to cause side effects, including abnormal heart rhythm, in some people. (Edwards, 6/17)