The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday quietly removed bizarre guidelines for using the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for the new coronavirus. The unproven treatment has been repeatedly hyped by President Donald Trump in spite of the warnings of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The CDC published “highly unusual” dosing guidance based on “unattributed anecdotes rather than peer-reviewed science” last month amid pressure on federal health officials from Trump, Reuters reported. The agency now appears to have quietly removed those guidelines from its website this week.
Eli Lee of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington first flagged the changes Tuesday.
The site no longer says that “some U.S. clinicians have reported anecdotally different hydroxychloroquine dosing” and both hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are “reportedly well-tolerated in COVID-19 patients.” It also no longer says that both drugs “are currently recommended for treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in several countries.”
Instead, the first line of the page now reads: “There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to prevent or treat COVID-19.” The page adds that “hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are under investigation in clinical trials.”