Swiss SOLIDARITY: An international public health emergency SOLIDARITY trial of treatments for COVID-19 infection in hospitalized patients

WHO SOLIDARITY trialThere are currently no available vaccines or treatments for COVID-19. Although there have been some suggestions for untested treatments that could be added to the usual care in hospitals, none is known to help. The World Health Organization (WHO) is, therefore, organizing a study in many countries in which some of these untested treatments are compared with each other, to discover whether any do help. The study treatments are remdesivir, chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir plus ritonavir, and interferon-beta. Some are given as daily pills, and some as daily injections.Patients invited to join the study will be those who are admitted to a collaborating hospital. Patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and who have consented to be part of the study will be randomly allocated to receive either local standard care alone or local standard care and one of a list of study drugs. During the study, some treatments may get removed from this list, and others may be added to it. Each patient will only receive one of the treatments. The patients will be followed up for the entire length of their hospital stay. Death from any cause will be recorded and this will be the main result used to determine whether a drug is effective. Length of hospital stay and time to first receiving ventilation (or intensive care) will also be recorded and used to determine the drug's effectiveness.The study is conducted between March 2020 and March 2021.