The government devised an "intelligent testing strategy" and scaled up its preparedness to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, taking lessons from the 2009 swine flu outbreak that had "exposed glaring gaps" in the country's diagnosis infrastructure, the ICMR said on May 25.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization's (WHO) Director-General, said that a clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) on COVID-19 patients has come to "a temporary pause", while the safety data of the the anti-malaria drug was being reviewed.

Among older people, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart and liver ailments put pressure on their weakened immune system, which makes it more difficult for them to deal with threats like the Coronavirus.

A significant observational study led by Professor Mandeep R. Mehra, executive director of the Brigham and Women's Hospital Center for Advanced Heart Disease in Boston, has claimed that treatment with antimalarial drug chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine offers no benefit for patients with COVID-19.

Researchers have found that age, male sex, obesity, and underlying illness have emerged as risk factors for severe COVID-19 or death in the UK.

To help create the vaccine for the novel coronavirus infection, a team of researchers has described the clinical features of the lungs of deceased COVID-19 patients.

Findings from a large observational study on patients with COVID-19 suggest that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine used alone or with macrolides proved to be ineffective and moreover associated with decreased survival and increased frequency of arrhythmias when used in treatment.