Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Trump's Claim That Malaria Drugs Treat Coronavirus Causes Death


Tue 24 Mar 2020 | 11:06 PM
shawar ibrahim

Donald Trump defied expert warnings and stated medical advice that the anti-malaria drug chloroquine might cure Coronavirus. “It’s been around for a long time,” the president said on Thursday, “so we know that if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.”

[embed]https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1240672025989001221?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1240672025989001221&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.com%2F2020%2F03%2F24%2Ftrump-hyped-chloroquine-cure-covid-19-man-arizona-took-died%2F[/embed]

On Sunday, a couple in Arizona who had heard the president describe the drug on television, and were afraid of dying from Coronavirus, discovered that they had a version of the chemical chloroquine phosphate, used to clean fish tanks, among their pet supplies.

The couple mistakenly believed that the chemical sold to pet owners, which is available online, was the same as the anti-malaria drug prescribed for humans. The male citizen who was 68, and his wife, who was 61, tried to self-medicate by mixing one teaspoon of the bitter-tasting chemical with soda and swallowing it.

Within 30 minutes, both became intoxicated and had to be transported to a Phoenix-area hospital, where the man died and his wife remains in critical condition.

Trump’s press conference statement about the possible benefit of the form of chloroquine prescribed by doctors for malaria was repeated several times on television,” the woman told Vaughn Hillyard of NBC News by phone from her hospital bed. “They kept saying that it was approved for other things and, you know, Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure.”