President Donald Trump has caused more than a few raised eyebrows in recent days as he continued to tout antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential coronavirus treatment, despite the fact that the evidence for the drug’s effectiveness remains limited.
Trump’s 2016 rival for the presidency couldn’t resist piling on:
Clinton, of course, was referring to this meme-generating moment from 2017:
The FDA on Tuesday said it would likely need results from a randomized controlled trial before authorizing its use. The agency’s principal deputy commissioner, Amy Abernathy, wouldn’t speculate on how long it would take for the FDA to authorize it on an emergency basis.
The drug has shown early signs of improving symptoms in a small number of patients, according to reports from doctors in South Korea, France and China cited by the Wall Street Journal.
The former secretary of state, like many of the president’s critics, has piled on Trump over his response to the coronavirus outbreak, which has infected more than 52,000 people in the U.S., according to the latest tally from Johns Hopkins University.
Clinton also shared her thoughts on Trump’s remarks about getting the U.S. economy up and running as the coronavirus pandemic shows no sign of slowing. “We’re not going to let the cure be worse than the problem itself,” Trump told reporters on Monday.