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Professor Nick White ells us about the COPCOV trial that aims to determine whether chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine are effective in preventing COVID-19 in health care workers.

This presentation is about the COPCOV study.

COPCOV is a double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trial of chemo prevention - or chemoprophylaxis - with chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, to see whether these drugs can prevent COVID-19 illness. It's a simple trial which will take place over three months.

Why do we need this trial? We need this trial because, as many of you will have heard through the press, through the news and through numerous reports, there are claims that these drugs might be beneficial in COVID-19 infections, in either prevention or treatment. The truth is we really do not know whether, if you take them you're better off or worse off. We really don't know.

These are old drugs; they've been used for many years so we're reasonably confident that they will be safe, but we just don't know whether they're going to be effective.

So this large randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial should give us the answers, and I hope by the end of the year we will all know whether or not you and other healthcare workers should or should not be taking these drugs