BREAKING: US approves anti-malaria drug to treat coronavirus

The United State of America will not delay using the anti-malarial drug-‘chloroquine’ to treat the deadly coronavirus known as Covid-19.

Onyxnewsng reports that the country under the administration of President Donald Trump has approved the quinine drug ‘chloroquine’ for treatment against the deadly pandemic disease.

US President, Donald Trump confirmed this on Thursday.

Trump said the anti malaria drug has been approved and it will be made available to people immediately.

Speaking to reporters at the White House earlier today, President Trump said: “We’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately, and that’s where the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has been so great.”

“They’ve gone through the approval process — it’s been approved. They took it down from many, many months to immediate. So we’re going to be able to make that drug available by prescription,” Trump said.

But the FDA Commissioner, Stephen Hahn later indicated that, while the drug has not yet been formally approved, access to it was being extended so that authorities could gather more information.

This is known as “’compassionate use’, if there is an experimental drug that is potentially available, a doctor could ask for that drug to be used in a patient. We have criteria for that and very speedy approval for that,” said Hahn.

Explaining further, Hahn said: “As an example, many Americans have read studies and heard media reports about this drug chloroquine, which is an anti-malarial drug.

“It’s already approved, as the president said, for the treatment of malaria as well as an arthritis condition.

“That’s a drug that the president directed us to take a closer look at, as to whether an expanded use approach to that could be done to actually see if that benefits patients,” the FDA commissioner said.

Chloroquine is a synthetic form of quinine, which has been used to treat malaria since the 1940s.

Onyxnewsng gathered that, recently, the drug has been used to treat coronavirus patients in China and in France, where some researchers said it showed great assurance, and it is said to be safe.

However, scientists agree that only more trials would determine if it really works.