Banner Health experts emphasized that the medication — as well as other “inappropriate medications and household products” — “should not be ingested to treat or prevent this virus.”
“Given the uncertainty around COVID-19, we understand that people are trying to find new ways to prevent or treat this virus,” Dr. Daniel Brooks, Banner Poison and Drug Information Center medical director, said in the statement. “But self-medicating is not the way to do so.”
Banner Health, which is based in Arizona, didn’t give any details on how the couple, both in their 60s, acquired the chloroquine or which Banner hospital treated them.
However, according to the statement, “within thirty minutes of ingestion, the couple experienced immediate effects requiring admittance to a nearby Banner Health hospital.”
Trump has called chloroquine, and the closely-related hydroxychloroquine, potential game changers in the fight against Covid-19.
“I…have said I’m not disagreeing with the fact anecdotally they might work, but my job is to prove definitively from a scientific standpoint that they do work,” Fauci, who serves on the White House coronavirus task force, said.
Banner Health said it is “strongly urging” health care providers not to prescribe chloroquine to patients who aren’t hospitalized.
“The last thing that we want right now is to inundate our emergency departments with patients who believe they found a vague and risky solution that could potentially jeopardize their health,” Brooks said.
Source : Nbcnewyork