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 recruitment challenge facing our HCQ trial has made it unlikely that the clinical team will 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 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 US Food and Drug Administration to stop the emergency use authorization of HCQ for COVID-19 treatment. In addition, ongoing studies involving other Novartis treatments continue, as well as the newly announced support of a potential vaccine. Novartis also continues to collaborate to find answers for COVID-19 through various partnerships with multi-stakeholder external consortia.
Novartis wishes to thank all of the patients, their families, investigators and healthcare professionals who played a vital part in our HCQ clinical trial (CJWT629A12301, NCT04358081) for COVID-19.
More information about the Novartis response to COVID-19 is available on novartis.com/coronavirus.
About Novartis
Novartis is reimagining medicine to improve and extend people's lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the world's top companies investing in research and development. Novartis products reach nearly 800 million people globally and we are finding innovative ways to expand access to our latest treatments. About 109,000 people of more than 145 nationalities work at Novartis around the world.