“The FDA’s [action] appears to formally close the door on U.S. officials’ willingness to use [hydroxychloroquine] to prevent or treat Covid-19.”
June 15, 2020
STAT News, WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration on Monday said it had withdrawn an emergency approval for use of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment.
Almost since the beginning of the novel coronavirus pandemic, President Trump and other world leaders have touted hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment based on scattered anecdotes, not reliable scientific studies.
But the FDA said Monday that the drug, along with chloroquine, is “unlikely to be effective in treating Covid-19,” and highlighted “serious side effects.”
The FDA’s withdrawal of the emergency use order, which Politico first reported, appears to formally close the door on U.S. officials’ willingness to use the drug to prevent or treat Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
In recent weeks, an increasingly conclusive body of research showed the drug was not effective at treating Covid-19 or at preventing the respiratory disease from developing in individuals who’d been exposed to the virus.
The controversy has pitted Trump and his high-profile allies against the country’s scientific establishment. Rick Bright, a prominent government scientist, has alleged he was ousted from his vaccine-development role after he opposed the initial emergency approval for hydroxychloroquine.
At a March press conference, Trump said his belief in the drug was “just a feeling,” contradicting Tony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease researcher, who told reporters minutes before there was no reliable evidence supporting hydroxychloroquine’s use … Read more.
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