Drug Trump touts for virus in wide use, without hard evidence it works COVID19
NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES - The decades-old drug that President Donald Trump has persistently promoted as a potential weapon against COVID-19 has within a matter of weeks become a standard of care in areas of the United States hit hard by the pandemic — though doctors prescribing it have no idea whether it works.
“I may take it,” Trump said on Saturday, referring to hydroxychloroquine, though he has twice tested negative for coronavirus, according to the White House. “We’re just hearing really positive stories, and we’re continuing to collect the data.” “I have seen hundreds of patients with severe COVID and most of these people are on hydroxychloroquine,” Dr Mangala Narasimhan, regional director of critical care at Northwell Health, a 23-hospital system in New York, said in an email. “In my opinion, although it is very early, I do not see a dramatic improvement from the hydroxychloroquine in these patients.”
After more than a week of worsening symptoms, Lat was admitted to NYU Langone Medical Center on March 16 and later placed on a ventilator. On March 28, he shared on Facebook that his doctors had taken him off of the ventilator and had moved him out of intensive care after his condition improved dramatically.
Despite such encouraging reports, hard evidence that any of the therapies now under study will work is weeks and possibly months way. More rigorous U.S.-led trials are now underway. But most focus on whether the drugs can help prevent illness in people exposed to the coronavirus, such as healthcare workers or relatives of confirmed patients, and not people who are already sick. Randomized, controlled trials of the drugs are being conducted in other countries, including China, Brazil and Norway.
Several of Trump’s top health officials, including Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, frequently caution that it is too early to promote hydroxychloroquine until results from more rigorous trials are available. While some studies suggest a benefit, “we’ve got to be careful that we don’t make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug,” Fauci told cable network Fox News on Friday.
Within hours of Trump’s initial endorsement on March 19, pharmaceutical supply chain experts reported shortages as doctors began prescribing hydroxychloroquine for themselves and their families. Vizient Inc, which works with about half of the country's hospitals to buy drugs, told Reuters that orders for hydroxychloroquine jumped to around 1.8 million tablets per day in late March, up from an average of around 40,000 tablets per day in late January.
"We feel like the hierarchy in terms of the evidence to support its use starts with remdesivir, then to hydroxychloroquine, and then it sort of rapidly deteriorates after that," said Dr Arun Sanyal, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.
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