President Donald Trump
After Trump told reporters at a White House briefing earlier today (Monday, May 18) that he is taking the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to ward of COVID-19, the White House has released a memorandum from the president’s physician confirming that Trump is taking the drug.
“As has been previously reported, two weeks ago one of the president’s support staff tested positive for COVID-19. The president is in very good health and has remained symptom-free. He receives regular COVID-19 testing, all negative to date,” the memorandum notes.
U.S. Navy Commander Dr. Sean P. Conley went on to say, “After numerous discussions he and I had regarding the evidence for and against the use of hydroxychloroquine, we concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks.
“In consultation with our inter-agency partners and subject matter experts around the country, I continue to monitor the myriad studies investigating potential COVID-19 therapies, and I anticipate employing the same shared medical decision making based on the evidence at hand in the future,” Conley concluded.
Within the last two weeks, several people working in the West Wing have reportedly been diagnosed with COVID-19, including the president’s personal valet and Katie Miller, Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary and wife of presidential advisor Stephen Miller.
Trump told reporters during a roundtable with restaurant executives that he started taking the drug “a couple of weeks ago.” He said he had taken an initial dose of the antibiotic azithromycin and also takes a dose of zinc daily, according to reports by Politico.
Even though studies so far have shown that not only does hydroxychloroquine have limited if any benefit for COVID-19 patients and could in fact be harmful, Trump dismissed those concerns and instead relief on anecdotal evidence he claims he was told by doctors and other front-line health care workers.
According to reporting by CNN Health, a new study — “the largest of its kind” — published May 11 in the Journal of the American Medical Association proved once again that hyrodxychloroquine does not work, supporting the results of other studies, including one published May 7 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Of the study published May 11, infectious disease expert and longtime CDC advisor Dr. William Schaffner said, “The nail has virtually been put in the coffin of hydroxychloroquine.”
Although the FDA authorized emergency use of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 after Trump began touting it as nearly a miracle cure for the disease, the agency has since warned against using the drug outside of strictly controlled clinical studies because of the chance of potential life-threatening heart problems caused by using the drug in combination with certain other medications — namely azithromycin. In the study published May 11 in JAMA, patients who took the hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin combination were more than twice as likely to suffer cardiac arrest compared to patients not taking the drug.