Plan to use hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 treatment receives setback

They decide to use much-touted anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19 patients has received a setback with more deaths being reported among people who got the drug, consistent with a report.

While another report suggested that there was insufficient clinical data to either recommend or oppose the use of hydroxychloroquine for treating those infected with the deadly virus.

President Donald Trump, who has been aggressively promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine within the treatment of COVID-19 patients, said that he would check out the reports.

His administration has stockpiled over 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine, a large chunk of which has been imported from India.

"I don't know of the report. There are some excellent reports, and maybe this one's not a good report. But we'll be observing it. We'll have a treat it at some point," Trump told reporters during his daily White House press conference on coronavirus.

Trump was responding to an issue on a study released by a gaggle of scientists on the use of hydroxychloroquine with or without antibiotic azithromycin for 368 COVID-19 patients. The unreviewed study submitted to New England Journal of medicine for publication and posted online found no evidence that use of hydroxychloroquine, either with or without azithromycin, reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in patients hospitalised with COVID-19.

"An association of increased overall mortality was identified in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone," said the study that was funded by the National Institute of Health or NIH.

NIH in its report 'Therapeutic Options for COVID-19 Currently Under Investigation' said that there are insufficient clinical data to either recommend or oppose using chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19.

If chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine is used, clinicians should monitor the patient for adverse effects, especially prolonged QTc interval, it said.

The panel of NIH experts recommended against the use of the mix of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin due to the potential for toxicities.

US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen M Hahn said that no final judgment had been taken up to now.

"I've mentioned from this podium and in other venues before, what FDA goes to want is data from clinical trials, randomised clinical trials, hydroxychloroquine/placebo, to make a definitive decision around safety and efficacy," he told reporters.

The first one may be a small retrospective study at the VA. "And similar to the data we talked about before with the French study, this can be something that a doctorate would want to contemplate as a part of a decision in prescribing hydroxychloroquine," he said.

"But the preliminary data are helpful to providers. i would like to ask them (doctors) to include the information as we've got it come forward. It's not definitive data. It doesn't help us make a call from a regulatory review." "But doctors should incorporate that within the decision-making they make on a one-on-one basis," Hahn said in response to an issue.

Congressman Bill Pascrell said the report analysing hydroxychloroquine as a possible COVID-19 treatment at veterans hospitals could be a bombshell indictment of the damage Trump and his administration does to Americans by putting politics before science. "The world-class medicine and doctors we enjoy today are the fruit of generations of painstaking work by our ancestors. Evidence-based science is that the only reply of this crisis, not unproven miracle therapies personally favoured by Donald Trump," he said.

"Trump's frequent touting of this treatment was deeply irresponsible, and may have heaped unnecessary pain and suffering, to not mention false hope, upon Americans struck by this terrible illness." "I have repeatedly warned the FDA about the danger of prizing Trump's political pressure over the scientific process. Unless we are guided by science and science alone, we are going to have more unnecessary deaths on our hands," Pascrell said.