US fast-tracking antimalarials to treat COVID-19

FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said that, while the antimalarials have not yet been formally approved, access could be expanded so that authorities could gather more data AFP/Brendan SmialowskiWASHINGTON: The US is fast-tracking antimalarial drugs for use as a treatment against the new coronavirus, President Donald Trump said Thursday , following encouraging early results in France and China.

"We're going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately, and that's where the FDA has been so great," Trump told reporters, referring to both compounds.The US has recorded more than 14,000 cases of new coronavirus infection, 205 of them fatal, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker. But authorities expect the number to rise steeply in the coming days because of increased levels of testing after initial delays.

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are synthetic forms of quinine, which is found in the barks of cinchona trees of Latin America and has been used to treat malaria for centuries. Raoult reported this week that after treating 24 patients for six days with Plaquenil, the virus had disappeared in all but a quarter of them.

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