Anti-malarial drugs ineffective, dangerous for covid19

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said that the use of anti-malarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat covid19 is ineffective and dangerous.

He was responding to an urgent question Wednesday from Fyzabad MP Lackram Bodoe about reports the drugs may be of value in treating covid19 patients and whether the ministry was considering making the drugs available to local covid19 patients. Deyalsingh explained the drugs are used to treat malaria which is a parasite while covid19 is a virus and totally different.

“The reports that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine may be effective are purely anecdotal in a small number of patients and carries no scientific or peer-reviewed weight. It has been proven in China to be no better than regular, supportive symptomatic care.”

He said the rush to get on the chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine “bandwagon” led to three people in Nigeria taking chloroquine without medical supervision and coming down with chloroquine poisoning. There were also two similar cases in the US (and in one case a man died).

“So the advice is chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine are absolutely useless and possibly dangerous in the use of treating covid19 and we don’t recommend it.”

Bodoe asked Deyalsingh to comment on the reports from local pharmacists that there is an increased demand for the drugs.

Deyalsingh replied: “The advice I would like to give to anyone who engage in hoarding, whether it’s drugs, hand sanitisers, toilet paper or food, is that when you hoard drugs especially you leave a gap in the healthcare system so that people who really need chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to treat malaria now don’t have it. So what you do is create now much more malaria cases.”

He urged the public to return any chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to their pharmacies as it posed no benefit to them and they could end up with with chloroquine poisoning. He added that local covid19 patients will continue to be treated as per World Health Organisation protocol which was supportive symptomatic treatment.

US President Donald Trump has cited chloroquine as a “game changer” in the treatment of covid19.