I’m not a doctor but what do we have to lose, says Trump as he backs malaria drug

President says US has ordered 29m doses of treatment that had ‘serious side-effects’ in Sweden

DONALD TRUMP has continued to back the use of antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus, despite splits among his advisers and mixed evidence on its effectiveness.

For the second day in a row, the US president talked up the possible positive benefits of the drug, using a briefing on Sunday evening to suggest that infected Americans ask their doctors for it. “What do you have to lose?” Mr Trump said repeatedly when challenged about his enthusiasm for the drug, which has not yet been proved to be effective against Covid-19.

At one point Mr Trump said: “What do I know? I’m not a doctor, but I have common sense,” suggesting there was not time for the drug to go through the usual rigorous testing before use.

The debate over using hydroxychloroquine, a drug already approved and on the market for tackling malaria, was not confined to America, with similar discussions playing out across Europe.

In the Swedish city of Gothenburg, all hospitals have stopped using chloroquine on coronavirus patients, deciding there were “more serious side-effects” than first expected.

In France, three senior scientists joined calls for the drug to be rolled out, saying preliminary trials were sufficiently conclusive to warrant handing it to patients in the early stages of the disease. However, Olivier Véran, the country’s health minister, warned: “The history of viral diseases is strewn with false hopes, disappointments and reckless risk-taking.”

Fierce debate on the subject has even broken out among the White House coronavirus task force, Mr Trump’s inner circle of advisers on how to tackle the pandemic.

Peter Navarro, Mr Trump’s trade adviser, clashed with Dr Anthony Fauci, the administration’s top infectious diseases expert, on the topic during a meeting on Saturday, according to US media reports. Dr Fauci has repeatedly stressed that while there were some encouraging signs in early studies of the drug, it had not yet been proved to be effective against Covid-19.

Yesterday morning the row spilt into the public forum as Mr Navarro defended his credentials, despite his lack of medical experience, in an interview with CNN when asked why he was better placed to advise on the matter than Dr Fauci.

“Doctors disagree about things all the time. My qualifications, in terms of looking at the science, is I’m a social scientist. I have a PHD and I understand how to read statistical studies,” he said.

Mr Trump said the US had ordered 29million doses of the drug and that it was already being distributed to some patients, such as in New York, the epicentre of the US outbreak.

The president said waiting for the drug to be fully tested and approved through the normal procedures would take too long: “If it does work, it would be a shame we did not do it early.”

Critics have questioned whether Mr Trump’s optimism goes beyond what the science says, and that Americans could be misled into trying an unproven drug. One man in Arizona died last month when he and his wife, fearing coronavirus, ingested fish treatment which listed chloroquine phosphate as an ingredient.

In France a heated debate has been rumbling on since Didier Raoult, a renowned if unorthodox virologist from Marseille, insisted that a mix of hydroxychloroquine and azithromicyne all but kills off the virus within eight days.

Prof Raoult predicted such treatment would herald the global epidemic’s “endgame”. He has been handing out the drugs to patients in Marseille and his Youtube posts have racked up millions of views. There are signs he has French public opinion on his side. More than 200,000 people have signed a petition to have it widely prescribed.

In Sweden, Dr Magnus Gisslén, who heads infectious diseases at Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska University Hospital, told Göteborgs-posten newspaper: “We acted initially like everybody else did and gave chloroquine to patients. Reports started to come in of more serious side-effects than we first thought. We cannot rule out side-effects, especially on the heart,” he said.

‘What do I know? I’m not a doctor, but I have common sense’