Nigerian Health officials have issued a warning over chloroquine after they said three people in the country overdosed on the drug following President Trump's comments about using it to treat coronavirus.
In response to Nigerians rushing to stock up on the drug and the reported deaths, the Lagos State Health Ministry issued a brief statement saying there was no "hard evidence that chloroquine is effective in prevention or management of coronavirus infection."
While Trump recently stated that the antimalarial drug had shown “very encouraging early results” treating COVID-19 and will be rolled out “almost immediately” to help fight the growing outbreak, U.S> FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn quickly cautioned that chloroquine had not yet been approved for treating COVID-19.
Experts and doctors are still disagreeing on chloroquine's potential as a COVID treatment. The drug can be lethal if taken by children or in large doses.
Professor Raoult, a French communicable disease expert, recently discussed positive results of a non-randomized, unblinded trial of 24 patients. (Use youtube subtitles to translate). Yet Chloroquine has been ruled out of some coronavirus trials due to the risk of interactions with other medications for common comorbidities in infected patients, and because of possible adverse effects in patients undergoing resuscitation.
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