BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana has acquired 75,000 tablets of a malaria-fighting drug touted in recent weeks by President Donald Trump for use in treatment of COVID-19 patients.
Attorney General Jeff Landry announced Monday that Teva Pharmaceuticals donated 75,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine, as well as 8,000 packs of azithromycin, a prescription antibiotic.
Another pharmaceutical company donated 400,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine last week. Those drugs have already been sent to more than 100 hospitals around Louisiana.
"I want to caution everyone that these drugs do not represent a silver bullet or magic solution to our COVID-19 coronovirus crisis; however, many medical doctors have chosen to prescribe these drugs to relieve symptoms of the virus in some patients," Landry said. "In some cases, this could allow the recoveries of these patients without the use of ventilators."
The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which is sometimes prescribed to treat lupus, has been a contentious point in the national debate over the coronavirus outbreak.
The president has been publicly pushing for more widespread use in COVID-19 treatment, while the fact that there is little proof of the drug's effectiveness has made some national health leaders decline to endorse it.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the nation's most prominent experts on coronavirus, has repeatedly refused to endorse hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment.
But because a vaccine is still at least a year away, and Louisiana appears to be in the peak of coronavirus deaths, state officials have decided to use the drugs sooner rather than later.
"In this fight to reduce the number of infections caused by the COVID-19 virus, Ochsner Health is considering all treatment options for our patients who are so acutely ill," said Warner Thomas, President & CEO of Ochsner Health, in a statement.
The use of the drugs in Louisiana comes as a new LSU study on its effectiveness both treating patients and inoculating first responders begins.
Firefighters, paramedics and police departments throughout the state have reported confirmed cases and deaths from coronavirus. They are at high risk because their jobs put them in contact with many who may be showing symptoms of the virus or carrying it asymptomatically.
Teva, the company supplying the latest shipment of drugs, is a plaintiff in an ongoing opioid lawsuit filed by the Louisiana Department of Justice, which Landry heads.
The attorney general said in a statement that he consulted with Gov. John Bel Edwards about accepting the shipment.
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