The entire world had been taken aback by the outbreak of the COVID-19 Novel Corona Virus Pandemic, which originated in Wuhan last year and has still been spreading unchecked, killing thousands of lives and infecting hundreds of thousands of others! With a comprehensive cure or vaccine for the virus yet to be ascertained, doctors have been struggling to treat infected patients and have been going with various medicines to see which best suits each patient. At the beginning of this Pandemic, Hydroxychloroquine was considered to be one of the best medicines to treat COVID. The US President Donald Trump had been a very vocal advocate for the usage of this medicine, which is commonly known as HCQ!

However, several medical practitioners had been against the prolonged or heavy usage of HCQ as it had proven side effects, the worst of which happened to be brain damage. The usage of this was then phased out and most doctors began using Remdesivir for treating patients who had been severely affected with COVID. This had a divided responses amidst the medical fraternity as some doctors were for using it while there were quite a few who were against the usage of Remdesivir! For some time now, the World Health Organisation had been against the usage of Remdesivir to treat COVID affected patients and had been issuing advisories to medical practitioners across the world to immediately stop its usage. However, this did not seem to evoke much of a response.

Now, WHO has issued a statement that it has removed Gilead's Remdesivir from its Prequalification list of medicines. This is a list of medicines that are often used as a benchmark by developing countries to procure their medicine stocks! Talking about this, the WHO Media Spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic stated, "Yes, we have suspended it from the PQ (Prequalification list). This suspension is a signal to countries that WHO, in compliance with the COVID treatment guidelines, does not recommend countries procure the drug for COVID." Earlier, Remdesivir had been used to treat the US President Donald Trump, when he was infected with COVID. This has also been an authorised COVID treatment drug in 50 countries. Gilead had signed a non-exclusive deal with many Indian pharma companies to manufacture and distribute the drug in India.