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An old malaria medicine, hydroxychloroquine, has gone viral on the internet. But is it really an antiviral drug? The medicine has been seen as a potential treatment for Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, almost since outbreaks started. This week it made headlines, due in part to tweets from President Trump and in part because of a small French study of 42 patients that seemed to show that hydroxychloroquine, particularly when combined with the antibiotic azithromycin, helped decrease patients’ levels of coronavirus. (Herper, 3/27)

New York is moving at unprecedented speed and scale in a human experiment to distribute tens of thousands of doses of anti-malarial drugs to seriously ill patients, spurred by political leaders including President Trump to try a treatment that is not proved to be effective against the coronavirus. With no proven treatment for the coronavirus, and infections in New York topping 30,000, health experts say the Food and Drug Administration has moved with uncommon speed to authorize New York’s sweeping plan to distribute the drugs through hospital networks. (Rowland, Swaine and Dawsey, 3/26)

A conservative business group founded by a prolific Republican political donor is pressuring the White House to greenlight an unproven COVID-19 treatment, saying in an online petition that the country has plants in the U.S. ready to produce a drug but can’t because of “red tape, regulation, and a dysfunctional healthcare supply chain.” In recent days, Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus’ Job Creators Network has placed Facebook ads and texted supporters to sign a petition urging President Donald Trump to “CUT RED TAPE” and make an anti-malarial drug called hydroxychloroquine available for treating those sickened with the virus, one such message obtained by ProPublica reads. (Pearson, 3/26)

The CEO of a global pharmaceutical company’s operations in Italy has advice for anyone expecting a Covid-19 solution anytime soon: Drugs and vaccines take time to create — and to be sure they work safely. “Drug development is a long, long, long process,” Massimo Scaccabarozzi, CEO of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit based in Milan, said Thursday on a call organized by the U.S. public relations firm Spectrum Science. He also heads the pharma industry’s trade association in Italy. “When we speak about a novel drug, if we discover a drug today, it will be in the house of a patient or in the hospital in 10 years.” (Cooney, 3/26)

Officials are working out final details in plans to begin clinical trials next week for a malaria drug combination that appears to hold some promise for confronting the coronavirus pandemic. New York state Health Department officials are making arrangements to determine what patients at which hospitals will be allowed to participate in trials with hydroxychloroquine, Zithromax and chloroquine, a senior official at the department with knowledge of the plan told ABC News. The bulk of the patients are expected to be in the New York City metro area because the region has the biggest cluster of cases. (Margolin, 3/26)

The world-wide spread of the new coronavirus is throwing into disarray studies critical to the development of promising new medicines. The pandemic is causing delays in starting clinical drug trials and temporarily halting others, according to companies, consultants and industry officials. Patients enrolled in some studies have stopped showing up at trial sites, while hospitals supposed to see trial subjects are shifting attention to tackling coronavirus patients. Industry scientists, meanwhile, can’t travel for research. (Hopkins, 3/27)