Hydroxychloroquine highly politicised in US but India uses it widely: White House official

use of hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients has become highly politicized in US but it is used widely in India, a top White House official has said, asserting latest research showed malaria drug is highly effective in early sts of COVID-19. It's politicization of this medicine by mainstream media and portions of medical community that somehow me this a battle between President Trump and m and created this undue fear and hysteria over a drug, a medicine that has been used for over 60 years relatively safely and is regularly prescribed to pregnant women if y are going to a malaria zone, White House Office of Tre and Manufacturing Policy Director Peter Navarro told reporters.

" idea that this is a dangerous drug is just silly, but if you ask American people based on media's cover of it, that is kind of state of play right w," he said.

Navarro said a day earlier four doctors at Detroit Hospital System filed a request for emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine. request was for three things. One, for early treatment use in a hospital setting. Number two, treatment between a doctor and his patient in an outpatient setting. Three, t just as a rapeutic but also as a possible prophylaxis for preventative use, he said.

"This request to FDA comes on heels of publication of ir study in Journal of Infectious Diseases last week that showed an astonishing 50 percent reduction in mortality rate for patients taking hydroxychloroquine," Navarro said.

Give hydroxy a chance, and please don't contribute to hydroxy hysteria because if it's prescribed under supervision of a doctor, odds that it can harm you are way, way smaller than odds that it can help you, Navarro said. This has become a highly politicized, but India uses this widely for prophylaxis. re is a number of studies which point to this actually working, White House Office of Tre and Manufacturing Policy Director Peter Navarro told reporters. official said if he were to show any kind of symptoms, he would first ask his doctor wher hydroxychloroquine is appropriate. And n I wouldn't hesitate to take it, he said. He said if one looks at 14-day arc of virus from beginning of symptoms, first seven days are critical: when a person may have fever, dry cough, possibly a profound sense of fatigue.

"At that point, your lungs are still intact, and virus is t appreciably spre to rest of your organs. Hydroxychloroquine, based on science in articles like one that originally appeared in 2005 in Journal of Virology, works in a rapeutic way by raising alkalinity of your cells which slows replication of virus and also can kill virus," he said.

"It also has an anti-inflammatory effect, which is why it is used for rheumatoid arthritis, and drug can refore also help man what is called cytokine storm," he said.

latest request to FDA also comes on heels of two decisions by FDA over last several months to shut down hydroxychloroquine. first was what is called a black box warning, second was a withdrawal of an EUA and what I can tell you as someone who works with Health and Human Services Department and FEMA to man stockpiles of hydroxychloroquine FDA decisions that y me which I think were precipitous and based on b science h a tremendously negative effect on two things, he ted.

One is ability for American people to use this medicine to protect mselves and two, ability for hospitals like Detroit Hospital System to recruit patients for kind of randomized blind clinical trials that everybody wants to settle once and for all questions of efficacy and safety, he ded. FDA's previous decision to reject emergency use authorization, he said, was based on two s of studies.

One set of studies that were poorly designed and basically doomed to failure, ar set of studies where if you look carefully at data it is very clear that se were late treatment studies where medicine would t work, he ded. Navarro said Detroit doctors are bringing back to FDA a clear case for early treatment. If results of Detroit study are confirmed in later studies, President Trump was absolutely right that hydroxychloroquine can save lives and if in fact early treatment use can le to a 50 percent reduction in mortality that is tens of thousands of American lives that are at stake by a phemen which I call hydroxy hysteria, Navarro said.