US President Donald Trump on Tuesday doubled down on his defense of using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, saying he believed the debate about the drug had become “very political.”

“It’s safe. It doesn’t cause problems. I had no problem. I had absolutely no problem,” Trump told reporters Tuesday during a briefing at the White House, according to The Hill, referencing his own use of hydroxychloroquine earlier this year for a 14-day period.

“It didn’t get me, and it’s not going to, hopefully, hurt anybody,” he added.

Trump later asserted that he believed use of the drug to treat COVID-19 has become taboo specifically because he has promoted it.

“Many doctors think it’s extremely good, and some people don’t,” Trump continued. “I think it’s become very political,” Trump continued.

Trump aggressively pushed the drug beginning in the first weeks of the outbreak and revealed in mid-May that he was on a regimen of hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure.

A May 22 study in the Lancet raised safety concerns about malaria drugs for coronavirus patients but several authors of that study subsequently retracted it.

Last week, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that hydroxychloroquine is not effective at treating COVID-19 and may cause adverse effects.

Following the publication of the Lancet report, the World Health Organization announced that it would be temporarily halting the use of hydroxychloroquine part of its global Solidarity trial amid a safety review.

Earlier this month, the WHO discontinued its trials of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 after they failed to reduce mortality.

Source: Elad Benari – Arutz Sheva