The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed from its website guidelines for doctors on how to prescribe two antimalarial drugs that President Donald Trump has touted as potential treatments for the novel coronavirus.

Trump has been pressing federal health officials to make the drugs — hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine — more widely available, despite little reliable evidence that they are effective at treating the virus.

The updated CDC guidance, published April 7, is shorter and no longer gives dosage information about the drugs.

Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat coronavirus. Nevertheless, on Saturday the FDA issued an emergency use authorization to distribute the two drugs from the national stockpile to treat patients hospitalized with COVID-19.

The CDC says the drugs are under investigation in clinical trials.

“Anecdotal reports suggest that these drugs may offer some benefit in the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients,” said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in a statement April 5.

But some experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have warned the administration that the drug is unproven and that there are dangers in promoting it before data backs up its efficacy.

(SD-Agencies)