The World Health Organization(WHO) has temporarily suspended testing of hydroxychloroquine in its COVID-19 drug trials, citing safety concerns.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during an online press conference from Geneva on Monday that the Executive Group has implemented a temporary pause of the drug’s arm within the Solidarity Trial while the data is reviewed by the Data Safety Monitoring Board. 

The executive group represents ten of the participating countries in the Solidarity Trial, which refers to a large-scale effort initiated by the WHO to find treatments for COVID-19.

The WHO chief was quick to stress, however, that hydroxychloroquine, touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as a coronavirus treatment, is accepted as generally safe for use in patients with autoimmune diseases or malaria.

Michael Ryan, head of the WHO's Health Emergencies Program, said the organization is just acting on an abundance of caution based on the recent results of all the studies to ensure that it can continue safely with that arm of the trial.

The WHO’s latest move falls in line with the results of a study released last Friday by medical journal The Lancet. The study looked at the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat some 96-thousand COVID-19 patients and assessed that there was a 34-percent increase in risk of mortality and a 137-percent increased risk of serious heart arrhythmias.