CDC removes unusual guidance to doctors about drugs promoted by Trump

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has removed from its website highly unusual guidance informing doctors on how to prescribe hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, drugs aggressively promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump to treat the coronavirus.

The move came three days after Reuters reported that the CDC published key dosing information involving the two anti-malaria drugs based on unattributed anecdotes rather than peer-reviewed science.

According to the initial CDC webpage, titled "Information for Clinicians on Therapeutic Options for Patients with COVID-19": "Although optimal dosing and duration of hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 are unknown, some U.S. clinicians have reported anecdotally" on several ways to prescribe the medication of COVID-19.

The original guidance was crafted by the CDC after U.S. President Trump personally pressed federal regulatory and health officials to make the malaria drugs more widely available to treat the novel coronavirus diseases, though the drugs in question had been untested for COVID-19.

U.S. President Donald Trump stops a reporter from asking Dr. Anthony Fauci a question about use of the drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the disease caused by the new coronavirus near the end of the daily coronavirus task force briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S. on April 5, 2020. /Reuters

Bolstered by his trade adviser, a television doctor, Larry Ellison of Oracle and Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former New York mayor, President Trump has seized on the drug as a miracle cure for the virus that has killed thousands and paralyzed American life.

Along the way, he has also prompted an international debate about a drug that many doctors and other health experts had further criticized the guidance as suggesting that doctors might prescribe the medications when it isn't established whether or not they are effective or harmful.

In addition, CNN has also reported that Trump's enthusiasm about hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus patients has spurred hoarding of it – even though it is still being tested and might not even work against the virus.

Now the CDC website no longer includes that information. Instead, its first sentence says: "There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to prevent or treat COVID-19."

The updated and shortened guidance adds that "Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are under investigation in clinical trials" for use on coronavirus patients.

(With input from Reuters)

(Cover: A woman holds a hydroxychloroquine prescription in Seattle, Washington, U.S. on March 31, 2020. /Reuters)