US President Donald Trump revealed on Monday that he is taking hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, the effectiveness of which against coronavirus has not been rigorously demonstrated at this stage.
“I’ve been taking it for a week and a half (…) I hear a lot of extraordinarily positive things” about this drug, said Mr. Trump to general surprise during an exchange with the journalists.
“You know the expression: what do you have to lose?”, He added, claiming a preventive use.
“I take one pill a day. At some point I will stop,” he said.
Health authorities in Canada and the United States warned in late April against the use outside of supervised clinical trials of this antimalarial to prevent infection or treat the new coronavirus.
“It won’t hurt me,” said Trump. “It has been used for 40 years for malaria (…) Many doctors take it,” he said.
The White House tenant also said he had “no symptoms” of the Covid-19. He said he was tested very regularly and that all of his tests so far had been negative.
Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have been used for years to treat malaria, certain autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis.
According to a study published ten days ago in the New England Journal of Medicine, administration of hydroxychloroquine did not significantly improve or deteriorate the condition of critically ill patients with coronavirus.
Funded by the American Institutes of Health (NIH), the observational study was conducted on Covid-19 patients admitted to the emergency departments of New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
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