Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration is requesting experimental coronavirus drugs from the federal government after threatening doctors for prescribing them to treat patients with COVID-19.
Whitmer is “pursuing a request” to receive shipments of hydroxychloroquine sulfate and chloroquine phosphate from the federally controlled Strategic National Stockpile, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin told Bridge Magazine.
The request marked a shift in her stance last week when she sent a letter to doctors threatening “administrative action” against any who prescribed the unproven drugs to treat coronavirus patients. Whitmer has since lifted the threat, according to Detroit’s Metro Times.
The drugs have been in use since the 1950s to treat malaria. Hydroxychloroquine is a more stable and less toxic version of chloroquine phosphate.
Trump has touted the drugs as potential treatments to the coronavirus and ordered the Food and Drug Administration to fast-track approval for clinical testing. The FDA has since approved hydroxychloroquine to be prescribed to “teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible.”
Virologists and researchers in France first identified hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment after testing it on a handful of COVID-19 patients in the country. The drug, when taken with the antibiotic azithromycin, cured six patients of the disease within a week.
