April 8, 2020 / By Madeline Holcombe, Jen Christensen and Joe Sutton, CNN
(CNN) – The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed from its website guidelines for doctors on how to prescribe two antimalarial drugs that President Donald Trump has touted as potential treatments for the novel coronavirus.
Trump has been pressing federal health officials to make the drugs — hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine — more widely available, despite little reliable evidence that they are effective at treating the virus.
The updated CDC guidance, published Tuesday, is shorter and no longer gives dosage information about the drugs.
CNN has reached out to the CDC for comment.
Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat coronavirus. Nevertheless, on Saturday the FDA issued an emergency use authorization to distribute the two drugs from the national stockpile to treat patients hospitalized with Covid-19.
