The Food and Drug Administration has revoked its emergency use authorization for the drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for treatment of Covid-19.
“FDA has concluded that…it is no longer reasonable to believe that oral formulations of HCQ and CQ may be effective in treating COVID-19, nor is it reasonable to believe that the known and potential benefits of these products outweigh their known and potential risks," FDA chief scientist Denise Hinton wrote in a letter to Gary Disbrow of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) on Monday.
Doctors can continue to legally prescribe the drugs off-label, as they can with any drug that's approved for other conditions. The FDA's emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine was narrow in scope, applying only to hospitalized Covid-19 patients and only to drugs donated to the Strategic National Stockpile.
The World Health Organization and other laboratories around the world are still testing hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 treatment. The WHO had temporarily paused the trial in May due to concerns surrounding the drug's safety and in order to review its own data, but resumed the program earlier this month after an interim data analysis determined that they had not seen significant safety concerns.
We will see.

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