Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet: Some governors or state pharmacy boards are issuing emergency orders to restrict which medications doctors can use to save lives.

While people's lives and jobs are being devastated by the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), and there has been no FDA-approved treatment, governors or state pharmacy boards in Nevada, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Texas are issuing emergency orders to restrict which medications doctors can use to save lives.            

These politicians have no background in infectious disease, medicine, research design, or epidemiology, yet they presume to dictate to front-line physicians who are reading the emerging research and caring for patients.            

Many doctors are using older medicines, FDA approved for more than 70 years and widely used worldwide to treat malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis—chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil). They often add azithromycin (Z-pak), a commonly used antibiotic with some activity against this virus.            

These politicians are presuming to decide that doctors may not prescribe these drugs "off-label," i.e. for anything other than the disease for which the FDA originally approved the drug. Their pretext is that we do not have large randomized controlled clinical trials (RCT) for this new indication.            

While we are facing one of the most devastating public health crises in our lifetime, there is NO time to wait for the years-long process of an RCT to provide "proof." Doctors who use the drugs can observe first-hand how patients respond.            

While governors have been handing down orders, doctors in the U.S. and overseas have been reporting remarkable success in treating COVID-19 patients: reductions in hospitalization, less need for scarce ventilators, less need for ICU and intubations, and significantly lower death rates. Two studies from France, conducted by Dr. Didier Raoult, specialist in infectious disease and viral illness, are very promising. Besides helping relieve signs of illness, hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin also appears to shorten the period of infectivity, which is critically important in controlling disease spread. Data on safety and effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are coming in almost daily from more than 10 countries, including Canada, Australia, Israel, South Korea, and China.