SIOUX FALLS, SD – South Dakota is going forward with plans to test using a controversial anti-malaria drug in small doses to prevent COVID-19, Gov. Kristi Noem announced Thursday.
The drug hydroxychloroquine has attracted controversy after President Donald Trump promoted it as an antidote to COVID-19, but was shown in studies not to help, and even to be harmful, to people hospitalized by the virus. Noem enlisted Dr. Allison Suttle, Sanford Health’s chief medical officer, to explain that this trial is different. Instead of administering the drug to people with serious cases of COVID-19, it will give smaller doses to people who have been exposed to the coronavirus in the hope it helps their immune system ward off the virus.
Trump takes the drug for the same reason as the South Dakota study — as a preventive measure. But the Food and Drug Administration has warned that the drug should only be administered in a hospital or a research setting. And the World Health Organization announced it was dropping it from its study of experimental COVID-19 treatments.
The smaller dose is safe, said Suttle, and could show if hydroxychloroquine helps people ward off COVID-19. The drug is used in a similar way to prevent malaria.
“It’s so important to be able to bring answers to the table,” she said.
Researchers are hoping to enlist 2,000 people in the study, although half of them will be given a placebo. Suttle said they have only enrolled a “handful” so far. The state is helping sponsor the trial.
