Covid-19 roundup: FDA's Stephen Hahn per­son­al­ly helped a doc­tor set up hy­drox­y­chloro­quine tri­al — re­port

As Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump took to the pres­i­den­tial podi­um to cham­pi­on hy­drox­y­chloro­quine de­spite its un­proven ef­fects against Covid-19, FDA com­mis­sion­er Stephen Hahn ap­par­ent­ly did more than is­sue an emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion for the drug.

He al­so per­son­al­ly as­sist­ed a self-de­scribed “sim­ple coun­try doc­tor” in Mon­roe, New York in nav­i­gat­ing the process of set­ting up an out­pa­tient clin­i­cal tri­al in­volv­ing some 950 in­fect­ed peo­ple, Van­i­ty Fair re­port­ed. Text mes­sages and email records show that Hahn in­tro­duced Vladimir Ze­lenko to of­fi­cials at FE­MA to ob­tain pills for the study — a high­ly un­usu­al act that sharp­ens fears of politi­ciza­tion of the malar­ia med.

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