Gail Alexan­der

An­ti-malar­ia drugs chloro­quine and hy­drochloro­quine can’t be used to treat the COVID-19 virus and some un­su­per­vised use of these drugs in Nige­ria and the US has re­sult­ed in poi­son­ing, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said yes­ter­day.

“They’re use­less and pos­si­bly dan­ger­ous - we don’t rec­om­mend them,” Deyals­ingh said in Par­lia­ment.

He gave the re­sponse to UNC MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, who asked about re­ports sug­gest­ing the two drugs may be valu­able in COVID treat­ment. Bo­doe want­ed to know if Gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing mak­ing this avail­able to lo­cal pa­tients. He al­so not­ed re­ports of in­creased de­mand for the drug.

Deyals­ingh said the drugs were for treat­ing a malar­ia caused by a par­a­site, when COVID-19 was a virus and the two are en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent. He said re­ports of their ef­fec­tive­ness were pure­ly anec­do­tal among a small num­ber of pa­tients and car­ried no sci­en­tif­ic weight.

He said the drugs were proven in Chi­na to be no bet­ter than symp­to­matic care and the rush to use these drugs - un­su­per­vised- had led to poi­son­ing in three Niger­ian cas­es and two in the US.

Deyals­ingh said when such drugs are hoard­ed, it left a gap in the sys­tem and peo­ple who re­al­ly need them to treat malar­ia can’t get them - in­creas­ing malar­ia cas­es.

“I’d ask the pub­lic to re­turn these two drugs to phar­ma­cies. They pose no re­al ben­e­fit to you,” he said.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, on an­oth­er query, said a “na­tion­al lock­down” wasn’t “on the front-burn­er at this stage.” But he said Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion with the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer’s ex­pert ad­vice. The CMO yes­ter­day said he had pow­er of the Quar­an­tine act. Young said an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team had “im­ple­ment­ed” a list of those whom the Health Min­istry would like to be mon­i­tored for quar­an­tine.

Young said Gov­ern­ment won’t use the law un­nec­es­sar­i­ly.

“We will if we have to. Po­lice are as­sist­ing the CMO with what they need, in­clud­ing pa­trolling out­side cer­tain homes.”

UNC’s Roodal Mooni­lal asked about steps to curb mall num­bers and what pro­ce­dures are in place for those mak­ing VAT pay­ments at BIR.

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, on an­oth­er query, said there’s no in­for­ma­tion to sug­gest any lo­cal or for­eign pas­sen­ger sus­pect­ed of hav­ing COVID-19 was al­lowed fer­ry ser­vice trav­el. Among mea­sures, the sea bridge is re­strict­ing ter­mi­nal/ves­sel en­try for any­one show­ing flu-like symp­toms. He said a Cabo Star crew mem­ber was un­well last week but the Health Min­istry ad­vised the per­son wasn’t a sus­pect­ed COVID case.