US approves chloroquine to treat coronavirus

The US is fast-tracking the anti-malarial drug chloroquine for use as a treatment against the new coronavirus.

President Trump said in a Thursday press briefing that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, drugs used to treat malaria and severe arthritis, were approved by the Food and Drug Administration to test as a COVID-19 coronavirus treatment, as the number of cases nationwide continues to increase. 

We’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately, and that’s where the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has been so great, Trump told reporters.

They’ve gone through the approval process — it’s been approved. They took it down from many, many months to immediate. So we’re going to be able to make that drug available by prescription.

But the FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn later indicated that, while the drug has not yet been formally approved, access to it was being expanded so that authorities could gather more data.

This is known as “compassionate use.”

If there is an experimental drug that is potentially available, a doctor could ask for that drug to be used in a patient. We have criteria for that and very speedy approval for that, said Hahn.

The drugs will be used in a clinical trial, according to FDA commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, who spoke during the press briefing.

Trump also said that other antiviral medications will be fast-tracked for FDA approval. 

We will collect that data and make the absolute right decisions based upon those data about the safety and efficacy of the treatments, said Hahn.

Trump also claimed that the White House has “slashed red tape” to speed up approval for vaccines and other treatments. 

Trump added that the FDA approved “compassionate use” for a number of patients, which allows very ill patients to use drugs not yet approved by the agency for widespread use.