Former Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy said in an interview Wednesday that after he was diagnosed with COVID-19 in November, he took hydroxychloroquine and was sick for "about three hours." Duffy, a FOX News contributor, told "The Dan O'Donnell Show" that in early November, the virus swept through their house.
"I took hydroxychloroquine, my wife [fellow FOX News contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy] did not. I was sick for about three hours and my wife, who did not take hydroxychloroquine, was sick for about seven days," he explained. "I'm a firm believer that hydroxychloroquine was what really did it for me."
Hydroxychloroquine has been a controversial treatment for COVID-19 since it was first authorized for emergency use and then-President Donald Trump advocated for its use last year. Doctors and COVID patients alike reported that it was an effective treatment, but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in April that it should not be used to treat COVID-19 "outside of the hospital setting or a clinical trial." The FDA revoked its emergency use authorization in June. In October, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it "recommends against the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine with or without azithromycin for the treatment of COVID-19."
"Science has become so political," said Duffy, adding that he believed the medical community's crusade against hydroxychloroquine is based primarily on Trump's support for it. "Liberals have shut down the scientific debate about what medicines work and giving the doctors the freedom to prescribe medicines that they think will help cure people and save lives.
"People I talked to at the [Trump] White House were like, 'it actually works. Forget what the left is saying. Hydroxychloroquine, when taken early at the first signs of COVID, will do wonders for you.' And it did for me. I took it right when I was exposed."
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