'Donald Trump loved' India pills to be tested on thousands in Mumbai slums

Mumbai: The country's financial capital Mumbai is fine-tuning a plan to administer an unproven but much touted anti-malarial drug in neighborhoods including Asia's most crowded slum, the first-of-its-kind mass experiment to ward off the coronavirus. The city officials are identifying a target group which will receive hydroxychloroquine, according to Suresh Kakani, additional commissioner at Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.

Medical experts are being consulted on the duration of dosage, he said, adding that a decision was expected in a couple of days.The move underscores the desperation and mounting pressure on health care officials for solutions against a novel pathogen which has infected over 2.1 million people globally and killed over 166,000.

It also explains the frenzied excitement over a decades-old drug -- U.S. President Donald Trump called it a "game changer" in the fight against the virus --despite a patchy efficacy record in some small studies and a documented list of side effects."This is a one-time window available to us and may give answers for the pandemic the world is struggling with," Kakani said. "We are taking utmost care to understand the side effects before implementing this.

"Mumbai, which has seen more than a tenth of India's over 17,800 cases and a quarter of its deaths, has emerged as the biggest virus hotspot in the country and is racing against time to curb the contagion in several clusters. The densely-packed slums of Dharavi are one of the two locations -- Worli, the worst-hit Mumbai neighborhood is the other-- where the city officials plan to start a hydroxychloroquine or HCQ-dosing drive as a prophylaxis or a preemptive medication aimed at warding off the disease.There's no conclusive scientific evidence that the drug works on virus patients, not to mention its use as a preventive therapy.