U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that he is taking anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to protect himself against the novel coronavirus despite safety warnings over its side effects.
While saying he did not believe he has been exposed to the highly contagious virus, the 73-year-old president told reporters that he has heard "tremendously positive news" about hydroxychloroquine and has taken "a pill every day" for about a week and a half.
[Pool/Getty/Kyodo]
Hydroxychloroquine is a drug Trump has pitched as a potential cure to the virus, despite the lack of clear scientific evidence. He has suggested that using the common malaria drug would have fewer safety concerns and could be made widely available more quickly than brand-new drugs.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted the emergency use of hydroxychloroquine in limited circumstances, such as for certain hospitalized patients. But in late April, it warned that the drug's side effects include "serious and potentially life-threatening heart rhythm problems."
Trump argued Monday that many frontline workers are taking hydroxychloroquine and that he will not "get hurt" because the drug has already been around for decades for malaria.
Trump said he asked a White House doctor what he thought about taking the drug and the answer was, "Well, if you'd like it."
"All I can tell you is so far I seem to be OK," the president also said.
Meanwhile, U.S. biotechnology firm Moderna Inc. said the same day that it has come up with "positive" results from its first human trial of a vaccine candidate against the new coronavirus, which started in March.
According to an interim clinical data, the vaccine created coronavirus antibodies in eight people who took part in the trial and it was "generally safe," the company said in a press release.
The investigational vaccine was developed using a genetic platform called messenger RNA. It directs the body's cells to express a virus protein that it is hoped will elicit a robust immune response, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
The Moderna vaccine is among the more than 100 candidate vaccines that are being developed worldwide to fight the virus, which has killed more than 310,000 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
