Trump Touts Unproven Coronavirus Drug Cocktail As ‘One Of The Biggest Game Changers In The History Of Medicine’
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Unofficial medical research expert and U.S. President Donald Trump hyped an unproven combination of drugs as potentially “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine” a day after Dr. Anthony Fauci tried to tamp down expectations for experimental coronavirus treatments.
In a series of tweets Saturday morning, Trump hyped a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment for COVID-19, despite the very preliminary stages of research into the pairing.
“HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains – Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents)…..,” Trump wrote in one tweet, then added “….be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE! @US_FDA @SteveFDA @CDCgov @DHSgov”
….be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE! @US_FDA @SteveFDA @CDCgov @DHSgov
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2020
But the study Trump cited was extremely limited, and the results preliminary:
The researchers performed a study on 30 confirmed COVID-19 patients, treating each with either hydroxychloroquine on its own, a combination of the medicine with the antibiotic, as well as a control group that received neither. The study was conducted after reports from treatment of Chinese patients indicated that this particular combo had efficacy in shortening the duration of infection in patients.
The patient mix included in the study included six who showed no symptoms whatsoever, as well as 22 who had symptoms in their upper respiratory tract (things like sneezing, headaches and sore throats, and eight who showed lower respiratory tract symptoms (mostly coughing). 20 of the 30 participants in the study received treatment, and the results showed that while hydroxycholoroquine was effective on its own as a treatment, when combined with azithromycin it was even more effective, and by a significant margin.
Trump’s tweet comes after a week in which he falsely told the public that drugs had been approved by the FDA to treat the coronavirus, then hyped the treatments at another briefing over the more measured advice of infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.
