Washington: One can never trust what President Donald Trump claims and here is the latest instance of one such gaffe.
Trump claimed that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved a “very powerful” drug chloroquine to treat coronavirus. (Chloroquine is used to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.)
However, FDA has denied the President’s claim. “There are no FDA-approved therapeutics or drugs to treat, cure or prevent COVID-19,” the US watchdog said in a statement and quoted by media outlet CNN.
At a White House media briefing on Thursday, Trump declared: “It (Chloroquine) has shown very encouraging — very, very encouraging early results. And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They have gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it — they took it down from many, many months to immediate. So we’re going to be able to make that drug available by prescription or states.”
He added: “Normally the FDA would take a long time to approve something like that, and it was approved very, very quickly and it’s now approved, by prescription.”
On the contrary, FDA Commissioner Dr Stephen Hahn clarified that Chloroquine has not been approved to treat the coronavirus, according to a CNN report.
Chloroquine would be tested through a “large, pragmatic clinical trial” with coronavirus patients, Hahn said, adding that studies are underway regarding this. “The study process is necessary even though the coronavirus situation is urgent,” Hahn said in the statement.
“We also must ensure these products are effective; otherwise we risk treating patients with a product that might not work when they could have pursued other, more appropriate, treatments,” he added.
