Britain’s medical regulatory agency has approved the resumption of a trial testing whether hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), the malaria drug favoured by US President Donald Trump, might help prevent health workers from contracting the novel Coronavirus.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency had suspended enrollment into the trial after a paper was published in the journal Lancet last month that suggested there was an increased death risk linked to the drug. The paper was found to be based on fraudulent data and was retracted.