The truth about the malaria drug everyone’s talking about

You’ve probably heard a lot about the possible use of a drug called hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients. And if you have, you’ve also probably heard a lot of disagreement among politicians and scientists about how much weight to throw behind it. Important to note: There are no FDA-approved treatments for Covid-19, and this drug is still being tested. Still, President Donald Trump himself called for doctors to prescribe hydroxychloroquine to Covid-19 patients. "I think people should [take hydroxychloroquine]," he told reporters at a White House press briefing on Saturday. "If it were me, in fact, I might do it anyway. I may take it ... I have to ask my doctors about that. But I may take it." Here’s what I want you to understand about this drug. There have only been very small studies of hydroxychloroquine. And there's been enthusiasm in the past for this particular drug as a potential treatment for flu -- a decade ago. Back then, it showed a lot of promise in the laboratory, but it didn't translate into human beings. It has to be tested before it can be called a game changer. So far, it has only been trialed in patients with mild disease. And there’s been some evidence in China that it may decrease the duration of someone's symptoms, such as cough and fever, by about a day or so. Remember, the good news is that most patients with mild forms of the disease are recovering regardless. That also means if you're trialing a drug on patients with mild disease, it's hard to really assess whether there's benefit from the medication or not. That's why you have to do larger and larger trials to make sure that's the case. Everyone is hopeful. Everybody wants a therapeutic of some sort, but we just don't know yet. There are a lot of different trials going on, different therapeutics. This is the one that's gotten a lot of the attention. But it’s important to look for other promising options, too.