Hahn told the committee Navarro “was very evident about his belief that hydroxychloroquine would work and that it worked and that it met the statutory standard for (emergency use authorization) even after the FDA revoked the authorization.” Hahn said Navarro cherry-picked data to show the drug worked, even though “it didn’t make sense to continue the EUA in a Phase 1 trial that basically showed that, in that setting, hydroxychloroquine didn’t work,” according to the report.
In a statement emailed to CNN, Navarro said: “The House Select Subcommittee’s bipartisan report ‘badly’ perpetuates one of the deadliest lies of the pandemic, namely that the safe and potent therapeutic for treating COVID, hydroxychloroquine, it was somehow dangerous. This lie persists despite abundant scientific evidence now to the contrary.”
Hatfill did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. Asked if he believed the report adequately characterized his comments, a spokesperson told CNN that Khan had no comment on the report. “His focus is on leading Harbinger Health.” Hahn is CEO of the company, which works to develop tests and treatments for cancer. A study in April 2020 found that there was no evidence that the drug reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in hospitalized patients. In fact, it found an association with increased mortality when used alone. Two studies published in May 2020 showed that it did not work in Covid-19 patients and could harm them. Patients who received the drug were more than twice as likely to suffer a cardiac arrest during one of the studies. Several later studies showed that the drug was not effective and may cause harm.
Hahn also told the committee that National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins told him during a White House meeting that Trump “expressed frustration that the National Institutes of Health might be putting up roadblocks” to the FDA’s approval of the convalescent plasma as a treatment for the coronavirus.
Convalescent plasma is a treatment created from the blood of those who have recovered from a Covid-19 infection. The FDA granted emergency use authorization for convalescent plasma to treat Covid-19 in late August 2020, but did so without peer-reviewed gold standard clinical trials showing the treatment worked. In fact, the treatment was ultimately found not to reduce deaths among Covid-19 patients or prevent moderate disease from becoming severe. At the time the treatment was approved by the FDA, prominent scientists speculated that it did so under pressure and “intimidation” from the White House. Dozens of hospitals said at the time that they would avoid or minimize the use of convalescent plasma until proper trials were completed. In September 2020, an NIH panel challenged the FDA’s decision, saying the treatment “should not be considered the standard of care for treating patients with Covid-19.”
The report also found that the White House had objected to the FDA’s request to vaccine makers that when they sought emergency use authorization for the vaccine, they submit two months of surveillance data to show that the vaccines worked. The committee’s report said the FDA’s guidance to vaccine makers had been stalled for weeks by the White House, but the agency found a job. The panel’s report suggested the Trump administration had blocked the FDA’s guidance because of objections to how it would slow vaccine approval until after the 2020 election.
“The Select Subcommittee’s findings that Trump White House officials deliberately and repeatedly tried to bend the FDA’s scientific work on coronavirus treatments and vaccines to the White House’s political will is yet another example of how the previous administration prioritized in policy over public health,” said spokesman James Cliburn. , who chairs the oversight subcommittee, said in a statement released with the report.
He added: “As today’s report makes clear, senior Trump administration officials undermined public health experts because they believed doing so would benefit the former president politically — secretly conspiring with well-known conspiracy theorists to dangerously promote a rejected coronavirus treatment, intimidating the FDA into changing its vaccine guidance and advocating for federal investigations of those who stood in their way.”
The report also said Navarro, as well as Hatfill, used personal email accounts, including encrypted accounts, to conduct business related to the coronavirus pandemic “apparently without duplicating an official government account or properly maintaining those records.” .
“No one is above the law, no matter how high up they worked in the White House, and I applaud the Department of Justice for seeking to uphold the law and hold Mr. Navarro accountable,” Clyburn said in the statement.
The report is based on a review of internal communications from Trump administration officials, Health and Human Services officials and other internal documents, as well as interviews with officials involved in the response to the coronavirus.
This is the commission’s second major report, the first to focus on the public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying the Trump administration has prevented health officials from speaking publicly, watered down testing guidelines and tried to interfere with other public health guidelines. health.
