U.S. President Donald Trump is in high spirit following a newspaper report that a coronavirus patient in Florida had been saved by hydroxychloroquine.
Trump has been touting hydroxychloroquine, used for treating lupus and arthritis, as a possible treatment of the dreaded disease.
The report, published by the New York Post on Sunday, identified the survivor as 52-year-old Rio Giardinieri.
The report comes ahead of a clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine, and a related drug, chloroquine, in New York on Tuesday.
“A great early result from a drug that will start tomorrow in New York and other places! #COVIDー19”, Trump tweeted on Monday.
Giardinieri was reportedly diagnosed with the coronavirus disease and pneumonia at the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in South Florida.
This followed five days of struggle with “horrendous back pain, headaches, cough and fatigue after contracting COVID-19, possibly at a conference in New York”, according to the New York Post.
He was said to have be placed in the intensive care unit where doctors later told him there was nothing more they could after his condition generated.
“I was at the point where I was barely able to speak and breathing was very challenging.
“I really thought my end was there,” the paper quoted him as saying.
At that point, Giardinieri said a friend told him about hydroxychloroquine, and he sought medical advice from an infectious disease doctor.
“He gave me all the reasons why I would probably not want to try it because there are no trials, there’s no testing, it was not something that was approved.
“And I said, ‘Look, I don’t know if I’m going to make it until the morning,’ because at that point I really thought I was coming to the end because I couldn’t breathe anymore.
“He agreed and authorised the use of it and 30 minutes later the nurse gave it to me,” he said, according to the paper.
Giardinieri, the vice president of a cooking equipment manufacturing company, said he been feeling ok since then.
“To me, there was no doubt in mind that I wouldn’t make it until morning,” said Giardinieri.
“So to me, the drug saved my life,” the paper quoted him as saying.(NAN)
