WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday made a strong defense of the disapproved use of an antimalarial drug to treat the coronavirus, hours after social media companies withdrew videos encouraging their use as mistaken information possibly damaging. .
The president, in a marked change in the more measured stance he has taken against the virus in recent days, turned to Twitter to promote hydroxychloroquine as a treatment against COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and to intensify his criticism. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert. In a briefing at the White House, Trump defended his decision to screen a viral video of a group of doctors promoting the use of the drug on Monday, even as his own government canceled the emergency authorization to use it against the coronavirus.
“I think they are highly respected doctors,” Trump said, adding that they believed in the drug. “There was a woman who was spectacular in his statements about it.” The doctors, members of a group called America’s Frontline Doctors, participated in an event organized by the Tea Party Patriots Action group, which has contributed resources to a pro-Trump political action committee.
Scientific studies have shown that hydroxychloroquine can cause more harm than good when used to treat the symptoms of COVID-19.
Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., and others shared the video of the event on Facebook and Twitter, forcing both platforms to step in and remove the content as part of a vigorous campaign to keep social media free of potentially damaging information about the virus. , although not before more than 17 million people had seen a version of the video that circulated on networks.
The decision to withdraw the videos sparked calls for “censorship” from conservatives, and Simone Gold, one of the doctors, tweeted that “there are always opposing views on medicine.”
“The treatment options for COVID-19 must be debated and discussed among our colleagues in the medical field,” he wrote. “However, they should never be censored or shut up.”
Others highlighted the differences between medical opinion and peer-reviewed scientific studies.
In many high-quality studies, we found no evidence that hydroxychloroquine, when used with or without the antibiotic azithromycin, as Trump has said many times, helps treat coronavirus infection or prevent serious illness after infection. Studies include some commissioned by the United States National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, and universities in the United States and around the world.
Due to the lack of benefit and risks of serious side effects such as cardiac arrhythmias, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently revoked its brief authorization for the emergency use of the drug to to attend cases of COVID-19. The treatment guidelines issued by the INS also specifically recommend not using hydroxychloroquine, except in formal studies.
In addition to sharing the video, Trump retweeted several messages attacking the credibility of Fauci, one of the prominent members of the White House special team against the coronavirus.
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Seitz reported from Chicago. Associated Press journalists David Klepper in Providence, Rhode Island and Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
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