Fauci tempers Trump's optimism on chloroquine use for coronavirus
President Trump and the leading scientific expert on infectious diseases on his coronavirus task force offered starkly different views Friday about whether Americans should feel hopeful that the antimalarial drug chloroquine could be used to stop the spread of COVID-19.
One day after Trump said chloroquine had shown “very encouraging early results” treating COVID-19 and would be rolled out to patients “almost immediately,” Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked at a briefing in Washington whether there was any evidence to suggest that taking the drug would help prevent a person from coming down with COVID-19.
“The answer is no. And the evidence that you’re talking about, John [Roberts, Fox News correspondent], is anecdotal evidence, so as the commissioner of FDA and the president mentioned yesterday, we’re trying to strike a balance between making something with a potential of an effect to the American people available, at the same time we do it under the auspices of a protocol that would give us information to determine if it’s truly safe and truly effective,” Fauci said. “But the information that you’re referring to specifically is anecdotal; it was not done in a controlled clinical trial, so you really can’t make any definitive statement about it.”
There have been reports from France and China that chloroquine has helped some COVID-19 patients, but there has been nothing like a large-scale clinical test in which, ideally, thousands of patients are treated with the drug and their outcomes compared with those of others who did not receive it. Such trials cost millions of dollars and can take months to run but are considered the gold standard in scientific evidence.
https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-tempers-trumps-optimism-on-chloroquine-use-for-coronavirus-181035811.html