The biomedical health community blasted FDA’s decision in March to authorize emergency use of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and its earlier version, chloroquine (CQ), to treat patients seriously ill from COVID-19. Medical authorities cited a lack of evidence of effectiveness for these products and ongoing concerns about adverse effects on patients with cardiac problems. The situation exposed FDA to charges of responding to White House pressure to make the drugs more widely available, as advocated by President Trump, difficulties aggravated by missteps by the agency’s new commissioner Stephen Hahn, who was criticized for failing to address shortages and failures in authorizing effective diagnostics able to track the spread of the COVID-19.
