President Donald Trump is still pushing a malaria drug as a potential treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, despite warnings from Dr. Anthony Fauci who say there is no strong evidence.
On Sunday, Trump announced that the nation had stockpiled nearly 30 million pills of an anti-malaria drug to treat COVID-19.
He said several times, “What do you have to lose?” during a briefing at the White House.
“I want them to try it, and it may work and it may not work,” Trump continued. “But if it doesn’t work, there is nothing lost by doing it. What I want is to save lives, but I don’t want it to be in a lab for a year and a half.”
“I’m not acting as a doctor, I’m saying do what you want, but there are some good signs,” he added.
Trump’s growing optimism about hydroxychloroquine, an FDA-approved anti-malaria drug, could help save American lives as COVID-19 infection rates in the nation reached up to 337,000, with more than 9,600 deaths.
However, Trump’s enthusiasm for the drug goes against the advice of many experts, including Dr. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), who is leading the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
Dr. Fauci told CBS we cannot “definitively say it works,” calling data thus far merely “suggestive.”
On Saturday, he told Fox News the nation had to be “careful that we don’t make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug.”
And on Sunday, during the press conference, Dr. Fauci said the nation’s best hope right now was simply “mitigation, mitigation, mitigation,” citing social distancing and frequent hand-washing measures to prevent the spread of the virus.
Trump went on to say, “What, really, do we have to lose. We have this medicine tested for many years, so it’s a very strong, powerful medicine but it doesn’t kill people. We don’t have time to go and say ‘gee, let’s take a couple of years.’”
A small study on hydroxychloroquine did find that some patients who had mild illness due to the coronavirus recovered faster after receiving the drug. However, the drug does have side effects, such as nausea and headache.
Once again, Trump said he is looking forward to re-open the nation once the COVID-19 cases taper off. However, he warned that some parts of the nation should be prepared for a “peak” in the coming days.
“Right now things are looking really good and opening up with a bang will be a great thing,” Trump said. “We have to open our country up. No country was designed for this.”
