Hydroxychloroquine alleviated symptoms, did not cure coronavirus in small study

Hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug that President Trump has called a “game changer” in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, relieved symptoms of the virus but didn’t rid patients of the disease, a small, recently released study shows.

The study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, tested 150 COVID-19 patients across 16 medical centers across China, the initial epicenter of the outbreak.

“When testing new treatments, we are looking for signals that show that they might be effective before proceeding to larger studies,” Allen Cheng, an infectious disease physician and a professor of epidemiology at Melbourne, Australia’s Monash University told Bloomberg. “This study doesn’t show any signal, so it is probably unlikely that it will be of clinical benefit.”

According to the study, patients who took the drug experienced some side effects, including diarrhea. 

The drug has been highly touted by Trump, though many health experts have warned that there haven’t been enough studies on the drug to know if it is actually an effective treatment against COVID-19.

Since Trump’s praise of the drug, numerous studies on the substance have begun, including in New York state, the new epicenter of the pandemic.