Trump claims to have been taking hydroxychloroquine despite FDA warnings – as it happened

• Donald Trump said he’s been taking hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug that he has repeatedly touted as a cure for coronavirus, despite a lack of evidence. The president said he has been taking the drug for a week and a half, as a prophylactic measure, going against the guidance of the FDA.
• The coronavirus death toll passed 90,000 in the US, even as states begin easing distancing measures. All but one state are looking to loosen restrictions, but only 18 have shown a downward trend in cases.
• Lindsay Graham, the Republican leader of the Senate judiciary committee, announced a debate and vote on whether to subpoena documents and testimony related to what Donald Trump has been referring to as “Obamagate”. Republicans are seeking testimony from Obama-era officials on the FBI investigation into Russian election interference.
  
• Trump said the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, asked him to fire the state department inspector general, which will intensify concerns that Pompeo politically retaliated against Steve Linick for investigations into the state department leader.
• Linick had been investigating Pompeo’s controversial decision to approve Saudi arms sales last year, according to the Democratic chair of the House foreign affairs committee. Reports had already emerged that Linick was investigating the secretary of state for allegedly making a department staffer run personal errands for him and his wife.
• Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine showed promising results in its first human safety tests. The results sparked hope that the vaccine could be more widely distributed in the next several months, as several companies race to develop an effective vaccine.
• The attorney general, William Barr, said he does not expect the investigation of the Russia inquiry to lead to a criminal investigation of Barack Obama or Joe Biden. Barr’s comment comes as the president continues to push his baseless claim that the former president and former vice-president broke the law in connection to the Russia investigation.
• Trump reportedly declined an invitation to address the World Health Organization, which he has criticized for its handling of the pandemic.

Republican senator Lindsay Graham announced that the judiciary committee would debate and vote on whether to subpoena documents and testimony from Obama-era officials, related to the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference.

Graham would subpoena testimony from witnesses including James Comey, Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, John Brennan, and Sally Yates. The Senate judiciary committee would vote on authorizing the subpoenas on 4 June.

The move is the latest in efforts by Trump and his allies to double down on the theory that Barack Obama and his administration concocted a hoax allegation that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. Trump has been referring to the conspiracy theory as “Obamagate”.

A judge in rural Oregon tossed out the state’s coronavirus restrictions, saying that the governor, Kate Brown, did not seek the legislature’s approval to extend the stay-at-home order. Brown is now seeking an emergency review of the decision by the state’s supreme court.

“The science behind these executive orders hasn’t changed one bit. Ongoing physical distancing, staying home as much as possible and wearing face coverings will save lives across Oregon,” Brown, a Democrat, said.

But the judge’s decision today, in response to a lawsuit by 10 churches who argued that the state’s social distancing protocols were unconstitutional, said, “the governor’s orders are not required for public safety when plaintiffs can continue to utilize social distancing and safety protocols at larger gatherings involving spiritual worship,” he wrote.

Judges have struck down restrictions by other Democratic governors, in Wisconsin and North Carolina.

Earlier this month, Brown extended the state’s social distancing mandate till 6 July, but most Oregon counties have already received the state’s approval to loosen restrictions.

The coronavirus death told in the US passed 90,000 Monday, and the number of cases climbed above 1.5m, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. The milestone came as more states seek to loosen restrictions and the president tweeted, “REOPEN OUR COUNTRY!”

The president has questioned the death toll, suggesting that the numbers have been inflated. But researchers from the CDC who analyzed deaths in New York over the past two months concluded that the actual death toll is likely higher than the reported number.

All the states, except Connecticut, have relaxed stay-at-home orders, to varying degrees. But only 18 states showed a downward trend of new cases according to data from Johns Hopkins.

The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:

Donald Trump’s campaign and national Republicans are pumping millions of dollars into efforts to restrict voting and aggressively fight Democratic efforts to make it easier to cast a ballot during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Republican National Committee has allocated $20m so far to oppose Democratic lawsuits across the country seeking to expand voting. Republicans are also seeking to recruit up to 50,000 people in 15 key states to serve as poll watchers and challenge the registration of voters they believe are ineligible, according to the New York Times.

The 2020 election will be the first time in nearly three decades that national Republicans will be involved in such a program. After the RNC was sued over intimidating minority voters in New Jersey in the early 1980s, they agreed to a federal court order not to engage in “ballot security” efforts. The order expired in 2018.

Vivian Ho reports:

Haircuts, in-person retail shopping, sporting events and religious services could be a reality again in some California counties in just the next few weeks, the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said Monday.

Newsom provided an optimistic outlook for the state in his daily briefing, where he modified the criteria that each of California’s 58 counties must meet to reopen and join the state in phase two of coronavirus containment.

“We are looking forward in the next few weeks to a number of significant milestones,” he said. “We expect if we hold the rate of transmissions, we hold the positivity rate down and continue to do justice to the number of hospitalizations, that we will be making announcements statewide.”

Newsom had already allowed for local variance to phase two of the stay-at-home order – California, as a large state with diverse needs, had been hit by the virus unevenly, with some rural counties experiencing low rates of infection and others like Los Angeles county experiencing more than half the deaths in the entire state.

While statewide, all retailers were allowed to reopen for curbside pickup, counties could also apply for looser restrictions, such as the go-ahead to reopen some offices, schools and dine-in restaurants. Those counties had to meet criteria such as no deaths in 14 days. Now, under the modified criteria announced Monday, in which counties have to show a rate of 8% positive tests over seven days and a hospitalization rate below 5%, Newsom believes that 53 of the state’s 58 counties could move deeper into phase two if their public health officials so desired.

He reiterated again that the decision was up to each individual county. “Just because we are creating the capacity and the availability to move into phase two doesn’t mean every county is ready,” he said. “LA county, as an example, I imagine, will be cautious in that respect.”

In California, there have been a total of 78,839 positive cases and 3,261 deaths.

During the event with restaurant executives, Trump also addressed the investigation into the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

“Here’s a man that is supposed to be negotiating war and peace with major, major countries with weaponry like the world has never seen before,” Trump told reporters. “And the Democrats and the fake news media, they are interested in a man who is walking their dog.”

Trump fired the state department’s inspector general, Steve Linick, on Friday. According to NBC, Linick has been investigating whether Pompeo and his wide made a staffer walk their dog, pick up dry cleaning and make them dinner reservations, as well as the circumstances of Pompeo’s sale of US weapons to Saudi Araba despite a congressional ban.

“I would rather have [Pompeo] on the phone with some world leader than have him wash dishes because maybe his wife isn’t there or his kids aren’t,” Trump said.

Of course, a third option would have been for the Pompeo family to hire dogwalkers and other helpers, rather than relying on state department employees to do their personal errands.

Trump’s use of hydroxychloroquine doesn’t appear to fit within the FDA’s emergency use authorization of the drug as a treatment for coronavirus. The president said he asked the White House doctor if he could take the antimalarial drug. “He said, well, if you’d like it.”

The emergency use authorization is very specific. It “allows chloroquine phosphate and hydroxychloroquine sulfate donated to the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) and distributed to states to be used by licensed healthcare providers to treat adults and teens hospitalized with Covid-19 who weigh more than 50 kg (110 pounds)”, according to the FDA.

It does not authorize the use of the drug as a preventative treatment.

Even Fox News was taken aback by the president’s announcement that he’s taking hydroxychloroquine.

Fact check: Trump on hydroxychloroquine

Trump acknowledged research finding that US veterans treated with hydroxychloroquine didn’t seem to fare better than those who weren’t given the drug. The preliminary study found that those treated with hydroxychloroquine had a higher risk of death than those who were not. The pre-print of the study, which has been published online without peer review, comes with many caveats. None of those caveats include Trump’s analysis. Those behind the research “aren’t big Trump fans,” the president said as an explanation for why he’s taking the unproven drug. The research was a “a very unscientific report,” Trump said.

The research was conducted by the VA and academic institutions including the University of Virginia School of Medicine. It analyzed the cases of 368 male coronavirus patients nationwide, 97 receiving hydroxychloroquine, 113 receiving hydroxychloroquine in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin, and 158 not receiving any hydroxychloroquine. This was not a randomized clinical trial, the gold standard of drug testing, which would randomly assign hydroxychloroquine treatment to some patients and not to others. Instead, researchers looked back on cases — and weren’t able to account for why doctors chose to treat some patients with the antimalarial drug and not others. It could be that those treated with hydroxychloroquine had a higher chance of death because doctors chose to give the most severely ill patients the unproven drug.

Asked about the potential harsh side effects of taking the drug, Trump told reporters, “All I can tell you is, so far I seem to be OK.”

Hydroxychloroquine is considered relatively safe for people without an underlying illness, but it’s unclear if it is safe for severely sick Covid-19 patients, who may have incurred organ damage due to the virus. The drug can have serious side effects, including serious heart rhythm problems.

So far, the evidence that it’s a cure for coronavirus is anecdotal and mixed. An initial French study that appeared to have launched the Trump administration’s obsession with the drug has since been discredited. The early results of trials and studies that have tricked in so far have not provided compelling evidence that hydroxychloriquine is a “miracle” drug, as Trump has claimed before.

The surge in demand for the unproven hydroxychloroquine also risks shortages of the drug for those who need it most. It is used to help patients manage the chronic autoimmune disease lupus, but some are already complaining the drug is harder to come by.

If Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine, he is going against the advice of his own administration.

The FDA has warned against using hydroxychloroquine or a related compound, chloroquine, for treating or preventing Covid-19 without medical supervision in a hospital, or as part of a clinical trial.

“While clinical trials are ongoing to determine the safety and effectiveness of these drugs for Covid-19, there are known side effects of these medications that should be considered,” the FDA commissioner, Stephen M Hahn, said in a statement issued in late April. “The FDA will continue to monitor and investigate these potential risks and will communicate publicly when more information is available.”

Here’s the clip of Trump saying he’s been taking hydroxychloroquine.

“I get a lot of positive calls about it,” Trump said of the antimalarial drug. So far, the scientific evidence that the drug works as a treatment has been thin. It has not been widely investigated as a prophylactic measure.

18 May 202016.37 EDT

Trump says he is taking controversial coronavirus treatment hydroxychloroquine

Joanna Walters

Extraordinary news emerging from the White House – the president has mentioned that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine. This is the dubious treatment for coronavirus that Trump had fiercely touted in the past but which was found to have a very mixed effect on patients.

No studies so far have shown that it had a good effect on patients and regulators have advised it not be taken outside of a hospital or clinical trial setting.

Trump said earlier at the White House that he was taking it, it is understood as a prophylactic.

The US Food and Drug Administration cautions against use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for Covid-19 outside of a hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems.

Before recent results from larger trials showed the anti-viral medicine was not good for Covid and could be harmful, Trump was promoting it, including at White House briefings, as a possible miracle cure for coronavirus.

That’s it from me today. Our west coast team will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• Trump said the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, asked him to fire the state department inspector general, which will intensify concerns that Pompeo politically retaliated against Steve Linick for investigations into the state department leader.
• Linick had been investigating Pompeo’s controversial decision to approve Saudi arms sales last year, according to the Democratic chair of the House foreign affairs committee. Reports had already emerged that Linick was investigating the secretary of state for allegedly making a department staffer run personal errands for him and his wife.
• Moderna’s coroanvirus vaccine showed promising results in its first human safety tests. The results sparked hope that the vaccine could be more widely distributed in the next several months, as several companies race to develop an effective vaccine.
• The attorney general, William Barr, said he does not expect the investigation of the Russia inquiry to lead to a criminal investigation of Barack Obama or Joe Biden. Barr’s comment comes as the president continues to push his baseless claim that the former president and former vice-president broke the law in connection to the Russia investigation.
• Trump reportedly declined an invitation to address the World Health Organization, which he has criticized for its handling of the pandemic.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.