- The US has approved chloroquine as a TEST for the treatment of coronavirus.
- Note that the US didn’t necessarily say the drug cures the virus
- A large pragmatic clinical trial is actually necessary to gather if it will help fight against the virus
- A Whatsapp message circulating in Nigeria claiming it is approved as a cure is FALSE
President Trump had a press briefing today, Thursday 19th March 2020, during which he revealed that chloroquine was approved to TEST against coronavirus.
The popular drug which is used to treat malaria and severe arthritis was approved by the Food and Drug Administration to test as a COVID-19 treatment.
Meanwhile, the number of cases around the world continue to soar every day. As such, scientists are scrambling around to find a cure for the disease which at the moment has NO CURE.
Scientists need to perform a large clinical trial
Note that the FDA only approved chloroquine for a test against the disease, and hasn’t disclosed that it is a cure for the disease.
Also, health workers will be responsible for testing the right amount of dosage on the appropriate patients, according to Stephen Hahn.
“We need to make sure that this sea of new treatments — we’ll get the right drug to the right patient at the right dosage at the right time,” CNN quoted FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn as saying.
According to Hahn, the right drug may be available but it may not be in the right dosage, “and that may do more harm than good.”
Speaking on the use of Chloroquine Stephen Hahn said, “That’s a drug that the President has directed us to take a closer look at as to whether an expanded use approach to that could be done and to actually see if that benefits patients.
“And again, we want to do that in the setting of a clinical trial, a large, pragmatic clinical trial to actually gather that information.”
False: the US didn’t approve chloroquine as a cure for coronavirus
A false WhatsApp voice message about covid-19 cure is currently circulating in Nigeria. The message recorded in a Nigerian accent claims that anti-malaria drug chloroquine phosphate is a cure for COVID-19.
However, that is misleading, according to AFP. Preliminary studies revealed that the molecule showed “apparent efficacy” in treating the disease. But trials are still ongoing.
Therefore, Experts warned against taking the drug without a prescription, as doing that is as a matter of fact dangerous.