States weigh what to do with large supply of malaria pills
WASHINGTON — The Strategic National Stockpile has shipped 28 million tablets of a malaria drug that President Donald Trump touted as a potential treatment for COVID-19 to states since April 1. States received millions more from donations or taxpayer-funded purchases.
But after doubts arose about whether the drug, hydroxychloroquine sulfate, is safe and effective for the coronavirus-based disease, states are donating supplies to patients who need them for other reasons, seeking refunds or weighing what to do with them.
As Trump encourages some states to lift shelter-at-home orders, states report that hydroxychloroquine, a linchpin of Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, won’t be used to prevent any resulting surge of illnesses and deaths because the drug may not work and has dangerous side effects.
States like Texas report that the drug no longer plays a role in their emergency response plans. In one week stretching from late March into early April, dozens of Texas hospitals across the state requested 467 bottles of hydroxychloroquine from the state’s emergency supply.
By the week of April 20, as new evidence emerged about the drug’s sometimes deadly side effects, requests fell to a trickle. Ten bottles were requested between April 20-24, data supplied by the Texas Department of State Health Services show. Over the last two weeks, following a Food and Drug Administration warning, no bottles were requested.
About 9,200 bottles of hydroxychloroquine, or 920,000 pills, remain sitting in the Texas stockpile.
North Carolina, which acquired 1.5 million tablets from donations and the national stockpile, also saw a drop-off in requests, according to the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.
Questions remain about how many states and hospitals obtained hydroxychloroquine and how they plan to use it. A spokesperson for the national stockpile would not specify which states and hospitals requested supplies, and said stockpile officials are not aware of which hospitals and longterm care facilities received it.
The hydroxychloroquine boom may have burned up valuable time and resources.
Michael Carome, director of the health research group at Public Citizen, said the use of hydroxychloroquine before FDA approval for COVID-19 may have diverted people from participating in clinical trials to study it and other nascent therapies. It may also have led to deaths.
“Some patients who were given the drug were probably harmed, and some may have died,” he said.
Some of the supply from the national stockpile will be directed to the lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients who faced problems because the drug was in short supply, a Health and Human Services spokesperson said.