DOCTOR’S NOTE

FDA Approves Trump-Backed Malaria Drugs for Coronavirus Patients Despite Patchy Evidence

The president has repeatedly name-checked hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as coronavirus treatments.

The Food and Drug Administration has issued an emergency-use authorization for two decades-old malaria drugs that have been repeatedly name-checked by President Donald Trump as a coronavirus treatment, despite a lack of solid scientific evidence that they’re effective. The agency has allowed hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to be “donated to the Strategic National Stockpile to be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible.” According to Politico, the FDA also announced that pharmaceutical company Sandoz donated 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine and Bayer donated a million doses of chloroquine. Scientists have urged caution in the use of both drugs for COVID-19, warning that there’s a lack of data on the drug’s usefulness for the disease and have expressed concerns that the hype around the drugs will take medication away from patients who need it for other conditions.