Potential coronavirus treatment touted by Trump already in shortage -pharmacists

[webfact]

Potential coronavirus treatment touted by Trump already in shortage -pharmacists

By Michael Erman

 

U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions during the coronavirus response daily briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 19, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An old malaria treatment that has been tried with some success against the new coronavirus and was touted by U.S. President Donald Trump at a news briefing earlier on Thursday is in short supply as demand surges amid the fast-spreading outbreak.

 

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), which maintains a list of drugs in shortage independent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's list, added the generic malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to its list on Thursday. Four out of eight manufacturers of the drug are currently in shortage, it said.

 

The new coronavirus, which causes the highly contagious COVID-19 respiratory illness, emerged in December in Wuhan, China and has spread throughout the world.

 

There are currently no vaccines or treatments approved for the disease, but researchers are studying existing treatments and working on experimental ones. At the moment, most patients can only receive supportive care.

 

Erin Fox, senior director of drug information at University of Utah Health, who maintains ASHP's shortages list, said pharmacists are unable to get the drug or fill prescriptions in full.

 

Fox said that University of Utah's 12 retail pharmacies are not filling prescriptions for prophylactic use, and are preserving their stocks for inpatient needs.

 

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday called on U.S. health regulators to expedite potential therapies aimed at treating COVID-19 amid the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak, saying it could lead to a breakthrough while a vaccine is still under development.

 

The FDA could not be reached for comment, but hydroxychloroquine is not currently on its drugs in shortage list.

 

Trump called on U.S. health regulators to expedite potential therapies aimed at treating COVID-19, including hydroxychloroquine.

 

"We're going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately," Trump said of the malaria drug at a White House briefing.

 

RUN ON PHARMACIES

Fox and the FDA have been watching for drug shortages that could be due to supply chain issues with manufacturing in China and India. But surging demand in recent weeks is the issue with the malaria drug, which can also treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, according to online pharmacy, Honeybee Health.

 

Its co-Chief Executive Jessica Nouhavandi sent a letter to prescribers earlier this week, urging them to be aware of potential hoarding of the drug that could deprives those who really need it.

 

On Thursday, Nouhavandi said demand was its highest yet after Trump's comments.

 

Jeff Bartone, who owns Hock's Pharmacy in Vandalia, Ohio, said he purchased five bottles of hydroxychloroquine this morning, but within an hour the company that distributes it to his pharmacy had run out.

 

He said four backup prescription drug wholesalers were out of the drug as well.

 

Bartone said he does not typically stock large amounts of the drug because it is not widely prescribed.

 

Mylan NV <MYL.O> - one of the manufacturers ASHP said was in shortage - said it was ramping up production of the drug and expects to be in a position to begin supplying it more broadly in mid-April.

 

It said with the raw materials on hand it can make 50 million tablets to potentially treat more than 1.5 million patients.

 

Bayer AG <BAYGn.DE> said it would donate 3 million tablets of Resochin - a closely related drug known generically as chloroquine phosphate. Chloroquine is also in shortage, according to the ASHP.

 

Online pharmacy Valisure said it too was unable to order any chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine as of Thursday from its four distributors.

 

Valisure Chief Executive David Light said other potential treatments are also becoming difficult to obtain.

 

"Kaletra and losartan are being rationed, meaning we are only allowed to order limited quantities at a time," he said.

 

Kaletra, a combination HIV treatment sold by AbbVie <ABBN.N>, and the generic blood pressure drug losartan have been considered as potential treatments for the virus, although Chinese investigators reported this week that Kaletra failed to improve outcomes for seriously ill COVID-19 patients.

 

(Reporting by Michael Erman; Additional reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-03-20

Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking COVID-19 updates

[Tug]

It’s not proven effective yet he’s just flapping his gums would be great if it does though!!

[mtls2005]

In 1918, while struggling to treat the Influenza, a new-fangled drug, Salycyalte, was used.

 

Aspirin. 

 

This seems to have dramatically increased the death rate. One doctor is quoted as saying that a German drug killed more people than German bullets.

 

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/49/9/1405/301441

 

Abstract
The high case-fatality rate—especially among young adults—during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic is incompletely understood. Although late deaths showed bacterial pneumonia, early deaths exhibited extremely “wet,” sometimes hemorrhagic lungs. The hypothesis presented herein is that aspirin contributed to the incidence and severity of viral pathology, bacterial infection, and death, because physicians of the day were unaware that the regimens (8.0–31.2 g per day) produce levels associated with hyperventilation and pulmonary edema in 33% and 3% of recipients, respectively. Recently, pulmonary edema was found at autopsy in 46% of 26 salicylate-intoxicated adults. Experimentally, salicylates increase lung fluid and protein levels and impair mucociliary clearance. In 1918, the US Surgeon General, the US Navy, and the Journal of the American Medical Association recommended use of aspirin just before the October death spike. If these recommendations were followed, and if pulmonary edema occurred in 3% of persons, a significant proportion of the deaths may be attributable to aspirin.

 

Youtbube, MedCram Update#40 has some details re: pros/cons of NSAIDs including ibuprofen and aspirin.

 

[Langsuan Man]

Shut up Mr. President 

[justin case]

a bit like "forsythia" from the movie contagion, lol

 

anti malarial medication have serious side effects ...

 

big pharma is going to make a KILLING in profits

Edited March 20, 2020 by justin case

[Brickbat]

Who in their right mind can believe this clown? Or Fox. All of them just repeat the same scripts. In 2 weeks , Fox did a complete turn around. Fair and a Balanced bs. From ridiculing the Virus danger to fear mongering. 
one thing for sure, cash is king. Markets are in decimation mode. And more to come in April.

[Stargeezr]

Trump  is having a hard time telling the truth.  I  hope his bad karma  gets him in the end.

  Maybe the virus will make the world change for the better, time will tell.

Geezer

[Lee4Life]

3 hours ago, Tug said:

It’s not proven effective yet he’s just flapping his gums would be great if it does though!!

The Chinese say they have been using it in the Wuhan area and it has proven effective there.

[zydeco]

So Trump created a run on a drug already in short supply that may only mitigate the symptoms of the virus in some people, certainly not all.  All just to juice the stock markets. What a guy.

[rabas]

14 minutes ago, zydeco said:

So Trump created a run on a drug already in short supply that may only mitigate the symptoms of the virus in some people, certainly not all.  All just to juice the stock markets. What a guy.

How do you juice markets with a low cost generic drug manufactured everywhere in the world since the 1940s? 

 

I doubt he caused the run it is not new news, I stocked up 2 weeks ago.

Edited March 20, 2020 by rabas

[NightSky]

4 hours ago, mtls2005 said:

In 1918, while struggling to treat the Influenza, a new-fangled drug, Salycyalte, was used.

 

Aspirin. 

 

This seems to have dramatically increased the death rate. One doctor is quoted as saying that a German drug killed more people than German bullets.

 

thank god its not 1918!

[zydeco]

3 hours ago, rabas said:

How do you juice markets with a low cost generic drug manufactured everywhere in the world since the 1940s? 

 

I doubt he caused the run it is not new news, I stocked up 2 weeks ago.

Didn't you read the headlines: "Cure! It's all over. V-shaped Recovery Coming, Now." He juiced the markets yesterday with "hopium." That's what he usually does. He spent a year and a half using China trade war hopium to raise the Dow 3000 points. 

[jany123]

4 hours ago, rabas said:

How do you juice markets with a low cost generic drug manufactured everywhere in the world since the 1940s? 

 

I doubt he caused the run it is not new news, I stocked up 2 weeks ago.

Mmmm.... Math.

 

1.5 million treatments with current materials

25 usd per month wholesale, in the USA (5 dollars elsewhere.)

thats north of 37 million dollars per month in the US

 

extrapolate ( because you already have 5 million on prescription, earning .... 125 million).... say take to 50 million.... 1 250 000 000 wholesale a month.

 

I reckon that’s enough to juice  pharma shares.... and as Mylan is up 500% over the average daily share price gain, so do a lot of people

 

 

[Jingthing]

Dr. Anthony Fauci perhaps the most respected American at this point in time still says there is no treatment breakthrough!

 

[Chazar]

3 hours ago, NightSky said:

thank god its not 1918!

theyll be  saying the same in another 100  years  about us

[zydeco]

30 minutes ago, Chazar said:

theyll be  saying the same in another 100  years  about us

Unless they're telling the story by painting on caves in torchlight, while wearing animal skins and skinning that night's dinner with flint knives.

[rabas]

42 minutes ago, jany123 said:

Mmmm.... Math.

 

1.5 million treatments with current materials

25 usd per month wholesale, in the USA (5 dollars elsewhere.)

thats north of 37 million dollars per month in the US

 

extrapolate ( because you already have 5 million on prescription, earning .... 125 million).... say take to 50 million.... 1 250 000 000 wholesale a month.

 

I reckon that’s enough to juice  pharma shares.... and as Mylan is up 500% over the average daily share price gain, so do a lot of people

 

 

So sorry, I and a whole lot of people already knew long ago. It's not secret. Where do you get your news?

 

And math requires facts. Chloroquine is dirt cheap and easy to manufacture in great quantity. It's been generic for decades.  You also probably don't know there are 220 million cases of malaria each year, and each case takes far more of the drug than a corona case. I seriously doubt America's $4,000,000,000,000/year health industry cares.

 

And yeah, how bout that market rally, jumped 1% after a 30% drop.

[metisdead]

A post using content from an unapproved YouTube source has been removed, please do not post anything that is not from a reliable source, no links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. 

 

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14) You will not post any copyrighted material except as fair use laws apply (as in the case of news articles). Please only post a link, the headline and the first three sentences. 

[watthong]

2 hours ago, Jingthing said:

Dr. Anthony Fauci perhaps the most respected American at this point in time still says there is no treatment breakthrough!

 

"We're not set up for this" were the words coming out of his mouth when grilled in Congress about the absence of test kits.  Director of NIAID - which lemme remind everybody, stands for National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases- threw up his hands over his own incompetence and his department's "failing" in their responsibility toward the american people.

 

Sorry, Dr. Fauci, you should have resigned when it was time to do so, same way a captain goes down with his ship. We are forever indebted to you for your long history of contribution and achievement. However, it's been heart-breaking to see you standing there among the gaggle of Trump yes-men/women, aka his Chinese virus taskforce. The Japanese used to commit hara-kiri whenever their reputation was besmirched, "It's a failing" would rank among such instances.

[JulesMad]

....And still america believes their 'genius' who knows everything better than real experts and specialists... He only cares about (his) money, and never about people. Sleep tight, america!

[bristolboy]

Trump is touting "cures" while blocking research for potential ones:

Fetal tissue ban blocks study of potential coronavirus therapies

The Trump administration’s 2019 ban on the use of human fetal tissue by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is preventing a leading researcher from using special mice to test potential therapies for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), The Washington Post reports.

According to the Post, Kim Hasenkrug, an immunologist at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories, has spent nearly 1 month appealing to the Trump administration to grant him an exemption to the administration’s strict policy. Federal restrictions imposed in June 2019 ban NIH scientists from using human fetal tissue donated after elective abortions.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/fetal-tissue-ban-blocks-study-potential-coronavirus-therapies?utm_campaign=news_daily_2020-03-19&et_rid=314208203&et_cid=3251825

 

[leogerritsen]

15 hours ago, webfact said:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An old malaria treatment that has been tried with some success against the new coronavirus and was touted by U.S. President Donald Trump at a news briefing earlier on Thursday is in short supply as demand surges amid the fast-spreading outbreak.

 

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), which maintains a list of drugs in shortage independent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's list, added the generic malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to its list on Thursday. Four out of eight manufacturers of the drug are currently in shortage, it said.

Don't tell me this drug is chlorine based

[bristolboy]

Just now, leogerritsen said:

Don't tell me this drug is chlorine based

Next they'll be alleging that about table salt!

[Orton Rd]

9 hours ago, Lee4Life said:

The Chinese say they have been using it in the Wuhan area and it has proven effective there.

Also the Japanese and researchers in Brisbane Uni, but the Trump haters cannot get past the word Trump, so it must be bad or not work to them, i'm taking it if I come down with the virus.

Edited March 20, 2020 by Orton Rd

[bristolboy]

On the other hand...

Virus Drug Touted by Trump, Musk Can Kill With Just Two Gram Dose

The drug touted by the U.S. President Donald Trump as a possible line of treatment against the coronavirus comes with severe warnings in China and can kill in dosages as little as two grams.

China, where the deadly pathogen first emerged in December, recommended the decades-old malaria drug chloroquine to treat infected patients in guidelines issued in February after seeing encouraging results in clinical trials. But within days, it cautioned doctors and health officials about the drug’s lethal side effects and rolled back its usage.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-20/virus-drug-touted-by-trump-musk-can-kill-with-just-two-grams?srnd=premium-asia

[Orton Rd]

5 minutes ago, bristolboy said:

On the other hand...

Virus Drug Touted by Trump, Musk Can Kill With Just Two Gram Dose

The drug touted by the U.S. President Donald Trump as a possible line of treatment against the coronavirus comes with severe warnings in China and can kill in dosages as little as two grams.

China, where the deadly pathogen first emerged in December, recommended the decades-old malaria drug chloroquine to treat infected patients in guidelines issued in February after seeing encouraging results in clinical trials. But within days, it cautioned doctors and health officials about the drug’s lethal side effects and rolled back its usage.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-20/virus-drug-touted-by-trump-musk-can-kill-with-just-two-grams?srnd=premium-asia

Dosage is no more than a gram a day, too much vodka will kill you as well paracetamol also, just scaremongering

Edited March 20, 2020 by Orton Rd

[bristolboy]

7 minutes ago, Orton Rd said:

Dosage is no more than half a gram a day, too much vodka will kill you as well

Did you mean dosage for COVID? Because I can't find that info.

For treatment of malaria:

• Adults—At first, 1000 milligrams (mg) once a day. Then, 500 mg 6 to 8 hours after the first dose, and 500 mg on the second and third days of treatment.
• For treatment of liver infection caused by protozoa:Adults—1000 milligrams (mg) once a day, taken for 2 days. This is followed by 500 mg once a day for at least 2 to 3 weeks.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/chloroquine-oral-route/proper-use/drg-20062834

Edited March 20, 2020 by bristolboy

[Logosone]

12 hours ago, mtls2005 said:

In 1918, while struggling to treat the Influenza, a new-fangled drug, Salycyalte, was used.

 

Aspirin. 

 

This seems to have dramatically increased the death rate. One doctor is quoted as saying that a German drug killed more people than German bullets.

 

Abstract
The high case-fatality rate—especially among young adults—during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic is incompletely understood. Although late deaths showed bacterial pneumonia, early deaths exhibited extremely “wet,” sometimes hemorrhagic lungs. The hypothesis presented herein is that aspirin contributed to the incidence and severity of viral pathology, bacterial infection, and death, because physicians of the day were unaware that the regimens (8.0–31.2 g per day) produce levels associated with hyperventilation and pulmonary edema in 33% and 3% of recipients, respectively. Recently, pulmonary edema was found at autopsy in 46% of 26 salicylate-intoxicated adults. Experimentally, salicylates increase lung fluid and protein levels and impair mucociliary clearance. In 1918, the US Surgeon General, the US Navy, and the Journal of the American Medical Association recommended use of aspirin just before the October death spike. If these recommendations were followed, and if pulmonary edema occurred in 3% of persons, a significant proportion of the deaths may be attributable to aspirin.

 

 

It wasn't the aspirin that killed, it was the ignorance of American doctors who prescribed the drug in far to big a dosage.

 

Moreover the aspirin hypothesis was trashed later by other academics:

 

As an explanation for the universally high mortality rate, this hypothesis was questioned in a letter to the journal published in April 2010 by Andrew Noymer and Daisy Carreon of the University of California, Irvine, and Niall Johnson of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. They questioned the universal applicability of the aspirin theory, given the high mortality rate in countries such as India, where there was little or no access to aspirin at the time, compared to the death rate in places where aspirin was plentiful.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Aspirin_poisoning

 

India's mortality rate was massively higher, yet they had very little access to aspirin. So doesn't look like the Aspirin theory is acceptable.

[Orton Rd]

It's in the bloomberg article, it says a gram a day, 2x 500mg doses

 

It can now be given only to patients between 18 to 65 years of age for a seven-day treatment course. Patients weighing over 50 kilograms (110 pounds) can take 500mg twice a day -- the usual dose -- while those weighing less will be administered the drug just once a day after two days of use, according to the latest guidelines.

<deleted> i'm too old ????

Edited March 20, 2020 by Orton Rd

[rabas]

12 minutes ago, Logosone said:

It wasn't the aspirin that killed, it was the ignorance of American doctors who prescribed the drug in far to big a dosage.

 

Moreover the aspirin hypothesis was trashed later by other academics:

 

As an explanation for the universally high mortality rate, this hypothesis was questioned in a letter to the journal published in April 2010 by Andrew Noymer and Daisy Carreon of the University of California, Irvine, and Niall Johnson of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. They questioned the universal applicability of the aspirin theory, given the high mortality rate in countries such as India, where there was little or no access to aspirin at the time, compared to the death rate in places where aspirin was plentiful.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Aspirin_poisoning

 

India's mortality rate was massively higher, yet they had very little access to aspirin. So doesn't look like the Aspirin theory is acceptable.

Your evidence just trashed your own attempt to trash American doctors because US fatalities were not that high.

 

More interestingly, Iran had the highest death rate in the world at 22% of the entire population (mortality). I assume their doctors were not as ignorant as the Americans.

Edited March 20, 2020 by rabas