WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed from its website highly unusual guidance informing doctors on how to prescribe hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, drugs recommended by President Donald Trump to treat the coronavirus.
The move comes three days after Reuters reported that the CDC published key dosing information involving the two antimalarial drugs based on unattributed anecdotes rather than peer-reviewed science.
Reuters also reported that the original guidance was crafted by the CDC after President Trump personally pressed federal regulatory and health officials to make the malaria drugs more widely available to treat the novel coronavirus, though the drugs in question had been untested for COVID-19.
Initially, the CDC webpage, titled Information for Clinicians on Therapeutic Options for Patients with COVID-19, had said: “Although optimal dosing and duration of hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 are unknown, some U.S. clinicians have reported anecdotally” on several ways to prescribe the medication of COVID-19.
Medical specialists had told Reuters they were surprised by that language. “Why would CDC be publishing anecdotes?” asked Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. “That doesn’t make sense. This is very unusual.”
Full story at Reuters
