RECOVERY (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy) International

The RECOVERY trial is expanding from the UK into hospitals in Indonesia, Nepal, and Vietnam, with plans to open sites in Africa. The trial has already recruited over 13,500 patients and produced three world practice-changing results within its first 100 days. Now, clinical investigators from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) want to join. This matters because the pandemic will continue at different paces across the globe for at least another 24 months. Without international coordination, smaller, uninformative studies waste resources and delay answers. Expanding RECOVERY lets researchers test new treatments faster, in populations where the disease behaves differently, and where healthcare systems are often under greater strain. If successful, the trial will generate results that are globally relevant, not just applicable to wealthy countries. It will also build clinical research capacity in LMICs, enabling those countries to run their own high-quality studies in future pandemics. For patients in these regions, the payoff is access to proven treatments sooner, rather than relying on evidence generated elsewhere that may not apply to them.