Donald Trump has branded Nancy Pelosi a “sick woman” with “a lot of mental problems” after she said he was “morbidly obese” and should not be taking an unapproved drug as a preventative measure for coronavirus.
The US president revealed overnight he had been taking hydroxychloroquine for the last week and a half in pill form and had had “zero symptoms”.
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 programme, house speaker Mrs Pelosi said: “As far as the president is concerned, he’s our president and I would rather he would not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group, and his, shall we say, weight group, morbidly obese, they say.
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Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria
“So I think it’s not a good idea.”
The president, who is 73, passed the official threshold for being considered obese, with a body mass index of 30.4, in February last year.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a BMI of 40 or above is considered morbidly obese.
Mr Trump has continued to double down on his decision to take the drug and has insisted it has a “great reputation” and gives “an additional level of safety”.
The US Food and Drug Administration has warned against the use of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients outside of a hospital setting or clinical trial due to the risk of serious heart rhythm problems.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), earlier said there was no eence the drug could prevent coronavirus, but added there was some anecdotal eence to show it can treat patients who are infected with the virus.
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Studies published in the medical journal BMJ have disputed this, saying patients given the drug did not improve significantly over those who did not.
Asked about some studies of hydroxycholoriquine which have warned of potentially fatal side effects, Mr Trump said there was only one “bad survey”.
“They were giving [the drug] to people that were in very bad shape,” he said. “They were very old. Almost dead.
“It was a Trump enemy statement.”
‘It is so wrong on so many parameters’
The president said he requested the drug from the White House physician and it had not been recommended by his doctor.
Asked whether he could proe any eence hydroxychloroquine has a preventative effect, Mr Trump told reporters: “I get a lot of positive calls about it.”
In a letter to the White House press secretary, the president’s physician, Commander Sean Conley, said he and Mr Trump had discussed the merits of the drug on several occasions and “we concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks”.
But British medical experts have criticised Dr Conley’s advice to the president.
‘Yeah I’m taking it, and I’m still here’
Bharat Pankhania, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter, told Sky News he was “extremely disappointed” to see Mr Trump’s own clinical physician say there was “no harm” in taking the drug.
“We have noticed cardiotoxicity, which means it has harmful effects on the heart muscle, and we’ve had reports of deaths due to taking an overdose of hydroxychloroquine,” he said.
“In this case it’s the president of the United States, so he may get other people to start taking it, which they shouldn’t. They may stop taking precautions against getting infections, they may take an overdose and die. This is serious.”
The UK government also stressed that taking the anti-malarial drug was “not something we recommend doing”.
Hydroxychloroquine is still being studied by the US and other countries as a potential COVID-19 treatment.
