Emails obtained by V.F. show how Trump appointees pressured career health officials to deliver chloroquine drugs to almost anyone who wanted them—even as internal studies warned of the risks and unproven benefits of using the drug for COVID-19
WH call. Really want to flood Ny and NJ with treatment courses. Hospitals have it. Sick out patients don’t. And can’t get. So go through distribution channels as we discussed. If we have 29 million perhaps send a few million ASAP? WH wants follow up in AM.
An HHS spokesperson said that, while clinical trials of the drugs proceed, some of the government’s hydroxychloroquine “was provided to wholesale distributors to further supply hospitals as well as retail pharmacies that were experiencing product shortages for people who use the drug for the maintenance of chronic conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
The next day Trump first spoke of hydroxychloroquine from the White House podium, citing its “very, very encouraging early results. And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately.” Because the drug had “been around for a long time,” he added, “if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.
The order to implement such a complex and unorthodox plan on a timetable driven by the president’s press announcements stunned numerous BARDA employees. Within hours, one official wrote to a colleague, “We have been hit by a bus. Now we hit back.” He said he would try to amend the proposal and find a “workable” solution.By late March, health officials across multiple agencies had settled on an alternate plan, which they viewed as safer for patients.
Dr. Bhimraj chaired the panel for the Infectious Diseases Society of America that recently issued treatment guidelines stating COVID-19 patients should only get treated with chloroquine drugs in hospital-based clinical trials. Based on the human data so far, he said, “We don’t know if the benefits outweigh the harm,” and only “double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies” can answer that question.
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