US Sees Drop in Daily COVID-19 Deaths

NaDa Mustafa

The United States (US) has recorded on Tuesday recorded 759 new coronavirus deaths during the last 24 hours, marking the second day of decline, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The figure is one of the lowest in recent weeks and follows 820 deaths the day before.

There have been 90,309 deaths linked to novel coronavirus in the US and more than 1.5 million cases of infection, the tracker showed.

It is worth mentioning that, US President Donald Trump revealed that for nearly ten days now, he has been taking anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, to prevent himself from coronavirus infection even though it is not yet a proven treatment.

Trump reaffirmed that he was not infected with Covid-19 and did not show any symptoms of the disease.

“I happen to be taking it,” Trump said during a roundtable event at the White House. “A lot of good things have come out. You’d be surprised at how many people are taking it, especially the front-line workers. Before you catch it. The front-line workers, many, many are taking it.”

He added: “I’m taking it, hydroxychloroquine. Right now, yeah. A couple of weeks ago, I started taking it. Cause I think it’s good, I’ve heard a lot of good stories.”

Trump also said that he is taking zinc and that he has taken an initial dose of azithromycin, or Z-Pak.

At the end of April, the US and Canadian health authorities had warned of the danger of using hydroxychloroquine to prevent infection with the emerging coronavirus or to treat people with this virus, if the drug was not used in a closely watched clinical trial.

However, the US President told reporters that taking this hydroxychloroquine “will not cause harm”, stressing that this drug “has been used for 40 years by many doctors taking it.”

Trump reiterated that he had “no symptoms” for Covid-19 disease, noting that he was regularly undergoing laboratory tests.

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are drugs that have been used for many years to treat malaria and some autoimmune diseases, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.