The TOGETHER trials were initiated in June 2020 (archives),with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided seed funding.  By September 21, 2020 Cytel had designed the “novel platform” to coordinate the COVID-19 TOGETHER clinical trials looking at outpatient treatments.  As of September 2020 “only 6 of 2000 trials are focused on early stages” for treating COVID-19 for a disease where “only 5% of coronavirus cases are considered severe”! [4]

The protocol published in October 2020 stated “An Adaptive Randomized Platform Trial to Investigate the Efficacy of Novel Agents for Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among High-Risk Outpatient Adults in Low and Middle Income Countries”, which was to be conducted in Brazil and South Africa. [1]  Initially looking at four different treatments against a “placebo” of vitamin C [5, 6] (which should itself be a treatment!)!

The Brazilian clinical trials were sponsored by cardiovascular “card” research, and started January 27, 2021. [9]
Protocol versions – HERE
Trial publications – HERE

The Cytel “platform” approach is designed to find effective treatments quickly but also to “eliminate poorly performing therapies” – as they did for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin etc.

Cytel designed the trial tracking software [3], and the trials were funded by FTX Foundation [7, 8, 10], the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rainwater Charitable Foundation, FastGrants, and UNITAID, [2]  Both FTX (now bankrupt) and UNITAID sponsored the TOGETHER trials sometime after Dec. 3, 2021 and by March 2022.

Dr Kory speaks to the shenanigans of the TOGETHER trial on ivermectin – WATCH