ST. LOUIS _ Washington University School of Medicine announced Thursday that it is launching a clinical trial to investigate the controversial drug chloroquine to treat the new coronavirus.
The drug gained prominence last month after President Donald Trump recommended it as a treatment, despite concerns leveled by health officials across the world. They warned that chloroquine and derivative hydroxychloroquine were unproven against the coronavirus, and can be dangerous. Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, cautioned that the evidence in favor of the drugs was largely anecdotal.
But the pressure to quickly mobilize research around the new coronavirus is immense. Scientists around the world have dropped other work to join the search for treatments and vaccines. St. Louis University recently announced that it would take part in a study of remdesivir, a drug previously tested on the Ebola virus.
