Will Trump's 'game-changing' hydroxychloroquine complicate battle against COVID-19?
Donald Trump
US President Donald Trump has championed the cause of hydroxychloroquine. The anti-malarial pill that's now being stocked up by many countries. With a long way to go for a vaccine. It's being considered as a plan B.
But a trial conducted to test the drug in Brazil turned fatal. Instead of saving lives. The drug's usage is taking lives. Research has emerged that there is no evidence that it cures the infection and the drug is known to have side-effects on a patient's heart.
It is currently considered the next best thing to a vaccine for COVID-19. Anti-malarial pill hydroxychloroquine has been touted as the go-to drug.
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American president Donald Trump called it "the biggest game-changer in the history of medicine.
But any hopes of it becoming one are crashing down. Red flags are being raised by one research study after another. The drug is not just failing to save lives but is endangering them even further.
Starting with the US where a study showed higher death rates of those taking the drug compared to those who did not take it.
A study in France too proved that hydroxychloroquine doesn't reduce deaths or admissions to ICUs.
A research trial in Brazil even proved fatal. Two patients got high doses of the drug and developed dangerous heart problems.
A known side-effect of hydroxychloroquine that led to their deaths.
Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro has been a major Trump ally on this drug. Echoing Donald Trump's extravagant claims, he had ordered the Brazilian army to stock up on it.
But now the fundamental safety of administering the drug is being questioned. The signs have been ominous right from the beginning.
Even as President Trump went to town with it, his food & drug authority chief Stephen Hahn's inhibitions were clear. He was reluctant to approve the drug without clinical trials.
Same were the sentiments of America's COVID-19 taskforce chief Dr Anthony Fauci too.
The trials to study the drug's efficacy in treating COVID-19 are turning dangerous. None of the results of the studies conducted so far have been peer-reviewed.
In the meanwhile, the drug itself has become a political matter.
Is hydroxychloroquine risking people's lives?
It's a drug that can be widely used. It's also a drug with serious side effects, especially to the heart. Its efficacy is the subject of a debate that is far from settled.