Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, has said that hydroxychloroquine, a drug that has been touted as a game-changer by President Donald Trump, is not effective at treating COVID-19, the infection caused by the new coronavirus.
Citing the results of clinical trials. Dr. Fauci has once again warned that hydroxychloroquine is ineffective in fighting the coronavirus after Trump continued to erroneously endorse the use of the drug this week.
On Wednesday, Dr. Fauci, who is the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, “Hydroxychloroquine is not effective in the treatment of coronavirus disease or COVID-19, referring to the results of numerous clinical studies that have “consistently” shown this.
Dr. Fauci is also one of the key members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
He continued, “If a study that’s a good study comes out and shows efficacy and safety for hydroxychloroquine or any other drug that we do, if you do it in the right way, you accept the scientific data. But right now today, the cumulative scientific data that has been put together, and done over a number of different studies, has shown no efficacy.”
Trump has repeatedly been insisting that hydroxychloroquine is safe and effective at treating coronavirus infection, despite poor scientific evidence. He even took the drug in order to prevent COVID-19.
On Tuesday, the president said, “I happen to believe in it. I would take it. As you know, I took it for a 14-day period. And as you know, I’m here. I happen to think it works in the early stages.”
Trump has even retweeted a video that has called hydroxychloroquine “a cure” for the illness, which has since been removed from social media platforms after experts said it is misleading information.
When asked about the coronavirus cure video, Dr. Fauci said, “The only recourse in fighting such misinformation is to be very, very clear in presenting the scientific data that essentially contradicts that.”
The NIAID director added, “We’ve got to follow the science.”
Peter Navarro, White House trade adviser, lamented that he has “tens of millions of [hydroxychloroquine] doses sitting in the Strategic National Stockpile which I can’t move.” “Do me a favor, let’s think about Americans dying when bad stories get written about hydroxy,” he added.
