US stockpile stuck with 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine
However, many infectious disease experts, including those who’ve studied the drug for coronavirus, say there was never any evidence that the drug worked for the virus.
In March, Trump
tweeted that a French study showed hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin “have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.” He continued to be a cheerleader for the drug for several months, and even said he took it himself after being exposed to staffers with the virus.
That
French study had so many problems that the society that published it has backed away from it.
First, the study didn’t conclude that the drug worked for Covid patients – just that it decreased the amount of the virus found in the nose and throat.
Also, it was a very small study – just 20 patients – and it ignored patients who took hydroxychloroquine and died or ended up in the intensive care unit.
After complaints about the study, the
International Study of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, which published the study in its medical journal, concluded that the study “does not meet the Society’s expected standard.”
Since then, two major studies have found that
the drug is ineffective against coronavirus. One of the studies, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also showed that Covid patients who took the drug were more than twice as likely to suffer cardiac arrest.