Seriously? That was a letter from the state licensing board. Who signed it?
Neither hydroxychloroquine nor chloroquine are FDA approved for the treatment of viral illness. The CDC is saying it is OK to be used in very limited situations for severe illness. That is based on one non-randomized, non-controlled French study of 36 patients which anecdotally showed decreased viral shedding time. That’s it. No clinical outcomes. No statistical significance. People claim in vitro activity against coronavirus, or activity in other mammals. Neither of those mean anything until proven in humans using standardized trials.
So, this is the state licensing board telling pharmacists that if they see these medications being prescribed inappropriately, they have the responsibility to do something. Just like literally every other prescription drug out there.
I’m sure there will be plenty of people who are going to brush off their junior medicine merit badge and tell me I’m full of it, or post a link to BS they haven’t critically reviewed and tell me I’m wrong. That’s fine. These medicines are not miracle drugs. They have real side effects which can be fatal. They are not candy to be given to anyone with cold symptoms.
Went over this already. You seem to miss the qualifiers I used when talking about the early disease process. I’m sorry you fail to understand what currently available data means. Find someone who can help you.
Let me help you out. This is the very first post I placed in that thread.
At this point in time, based on the available data, this is much more media hysteria than a true emergency. Unless China is completely fabricating the numbers, this particular strain of coronavirus does not appear to be significantly more virulent than typical strain. It does not approach the severity of SARS or MERS and as of now has a transmission rate (R0 to keep it simple) that is somewhat high, but still much lower than SARS.
This could change. It could hit a huge population center, mutate and become more severe/transmissible. China could be drastically underreporting and we already have an emergency. I think both of those are unlikely.
As of now, it’s 99% hysteria and 1% real concern.
I’m sorry you don’t understand what any of that means.
I hope they do show benefit. The more weapons we have against the virus the better. This was more saying this is not an atypical thing to do when a rarely used medication, or medication typically used for other purposes, is expected to be prescribed more often. It’s a heads up to pharmacists saying you may see this medication more frequently, and you need to make sure it’s appropriate for the patient and that there are no contraindications the ordering provider may have forgotten or simply not know about (psoriasis, heart arrhythmia, liver problems, etc.).
Pretty sure if she gets it (Covid) she’s going to tell them no when it’s offered to her as a treatment.
Oh wait, in her case it will “justified”, right?
Pretty easy as a pharmacist to sit in judgement of doctors who prescribe something right up until that person dies because they didn’t feel that person needed the prescribed medication.
When a doctor prescribed a medication, that is not a final order to the pharmacist to fill that order. That pharmacist can decline for various reasons. If the medicine is contraindicated and leads to death or injury, the pharmacist can be held liable just as the doctor can.
