In April 2020, the Trump administration bypassed safety controls at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), ordering the distribution of tens of millions of doses of hydroxychloroquine to be used as a ‘potential cure’ for Covid. Despite the FDA’s emergency authorization on March 28, which restricted use of hydroxychloroquine to hospitals and drug trials, 23 million doses of the drug were shipped to a dozen states.
The intended recipients, according to the administration, were retail pharmacies in hard-hit cities. But according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Strategic National Stockpile where the medicine was stored, “the pills were supposed to go to retail pharmacies but that the agency does not know where the pills ultimately ended up.”
On May 19, the day after President Trump announced that he was taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent contracting the virus and touted its efficacy, FDA scientists completed an analysis that found 87 deaths and hundreds of adverse health events linked to the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as a treatment for Covid.