The original guidance showed up over the weekend on the CDC website under “Therapeutic Options.” It read: “Although optimal dosing and duration of hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 are unknown, some US clinicians have reported anecdotally” on ways to prescribe it.
According to Reuters, three days later, on Tuesday, the guidance on the dosing information involving the two antimalarial drugs – hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, was removed from the CDC website,
A CDC statement says the original guidance had been requested by doctors and the White House virus task force to be reviewed and posted “as quickly as possible.”
Medical experts were surprised at the posting of an obviously unproven treatment. “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.”
Today, the CDC section on Therapeutic Options reads: “There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the [FDA] to prevent or treat COVID-19.”
The Hill notes that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned just last week that there was currently “no strong evidence” that hydroxychloroquine has proven effective in the coronavirus fight.
“We don’t operate on how you feel, we operate on what evidence and data is,” Fauci said, adding that it was “not a very robust study” or “overwhelmingly strong.”
Jeffrey Flier, a former dean at Harvard Medical School, agrees. “We are in an emergency and we need to rely on our government to ensure that all these potential therapies are tested in the most effective and objective way,” he told Reuters. “The president is short-circuiting the process with his gut feelings.”
