STUDY: Trump’s Malaria Drug Doesn’t Prevent COVID

The Washington Post reports:

Hydroxychloroquine did not prevent healthy people exposed to covid-19 from getting the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to a study being published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study is the first randomized clinical trial that tested the antimalarial drug, touted by President Trump, as a preventive measure. It showed that hydroxychloroquine was no more effective than a placebo — in this case, a vitamin — in protecting people exposed to covid-19.

“As we say in Tennessee, ‘That dog won’t hunt’ — it didn’t work,” said William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Schaffner, who was not involved in the trial, praised it as “rigorously done.”

Hydroxychloroquine, a drug promoted by Trump, did not stop healthy people from getting covid-19 in trial https://t.co/2tOR5lefGU

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 3, 2020