Prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug touted by President Donald Trump as a potential COVID-19 treatment during the early months of the pandemic, shot up by 59 percent during March and April, according to a Sept. 3 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hydroxychloroquine has made frequent appearances in national headlines throughout the pandemic as the medical community and federal government struggled to establish a cohesive opinion on the drug's effectiveness in treating COVID-19.
The CDC report revealed that more than 1.3 million prescriptions were written for hydroxychloroquine in March and April, compared to nearly 820,000 during the same period in 2019.
The report also revealed that nonroutine prescribers — personnel who are not primary care doctors who would usually prescribe the drug — wrote more than 75,000 prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, its sister drug, in March. That accounts for a 6,511 percent increase in hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine prescriptions written by that group from February.
The nonroutine prescribing specialties with the largest hydroxychloroquine prescription volume increase in March were ophthalmology, anesthesiology and cardiology, according to the agency.