President Trump continued Saturday to tout a promising, but still unproven cocktail of drugs should be used “immediately” in the battle to contain COVID-19.
“HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains – Thank You!,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “Hopefully they will BOTH … be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE!”
The president made sure to tag the official accounts of Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and FDA boss Stephen Hahn.
Earlier in the week, Trump said hydroxychloroquine was among the drugs being tested for treating coronavirus, but his FDA chief said it’s too soon to say when.
Hydroxychloroquine, sold under the brand name Plaquenil, was approved for use in the US in 1955 to treat malaria. In a small, 36-patient study by French researchers published earlier this month, it was shown effective in killing the novel coronavirus.
Combined with the antibiotic azithromycin, a subset of six patients all tested negative for the bug by the sixth day, the researchers found.
“This would be a gift from heaven, this would be a gift from God if it works,” Trump said of the potential treatment at a Saturday press conference. “We are going to pray to God that it does work.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most visible member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, agreed — to a point.
“The president is talking about hope for people and it’s not an unreasonable thing to hope for people,” Fauci said. “My job as a scientist … is to ultimately prove without a doubt that a drug is not only safe, but that it actually works,” he added.
“Those two things are really not incompatible when you think about it, particularly when you’re in an arena where you don’t have anything that’s proven,” Fauci said.