Hydroxychloroquine is not recommended as a Covid-19 treatment

NEWS 02.08.202018:23
Reuters/George Frey

Hydroxychloroquine is not recommended as a treatment for Covid-19, Adm. Brett Giroir, a member of the White House coronavirus task force said on NBC on Sunday.

“At this point in time, there’s been five randomized controlled, placebo-controlled trials, that do not show any benefit to hydroxychloroquine,” Giroir said. “So, at this point in time, we don’t recommend that as a treatment.”

Giroir said that hydroxychloroquine needs to be prescribed by a physician, and there may be circumstances where it is prescribed, in response to a question about the potentially mixed messages that are being sent out about the drug.

“But I think most physicians and prescribers are evidence-based and they’re not influenced by whatever is on Twitter or anything else,” he said. “And the evidence just doesn’t show that hydroxychloroquine is effective right now.”

Giroir said that he thinks “we need to move on from that and talk about what is effective.”

This includes public health measures like hand washing and mask-wearing, and therapeutics and treatments that are known to be effective.

“We have many things that do work,” Giroir said. “Right now, hydroxychloroquine, I can’t recommend that.”

Giroir said that there were other therapeutics which have shown promise, such as remdesivir and steroids which have reduced mortality. He also said that while they still don’t know about immune plasma, there are trials and it has worked in other cases.