Navarro says Fauci and CNN have 'blood' on their hands after study shows hydroxychloroquine doubles COVID survival rate

Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro has strong words for Dr. Anthony Fauci and far-left network CNN for dismissing the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19, after a new study found that treatments of the malaria drug combined with zinc more than doubled the survival rate of coronavirus patients on ventilators.

Navarro says Fauci and CNN have blood on their hands.

What are the details?

"I had 60 million tablets of HCQ that Tony Fauci and @cc wouldn't allow the American public to use because of their Hydroxy Hysteria," Navarro tweeted on Thursday. "Blood on @JohnBerman@cnn and Saint Fauci's hands. More than 50,000 Americans would be alive today."

The economist shared a link to an article by The Daily Mail, titled, "Was Trump right about hydroxychloroquine all along? New study shows drug touted by former president can increase COVID survival rates by 200%."

The Mail pointed to an observational study on 255 COVID-19 patients published in medRxiv on May 31, that was conducted by Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, concluded that "when the cumulative doses" of hydroxychloroquine and zinc "were above a certain level, patients had a survival rate 2.9 times the other patients."

What's the background?

Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic last year, then-President Donald Trump touted hydroxychloroquine as a promising treatment against the virus.

Germany's Bayer pharmaceutical company in turn donated three million doses of the anti-malarial to the U.S., as health care providers were already treating coronavirus patients with hydroxychloroquine-based treatments in France, China, and other nations, MarketWatch reported at the time.

The Washington Examiner noted Trump's promotion of HCQ "earned him pushback from medical experts, including his own White House coronavirus team member Dr. Anthony Fauci, and political pundits who dismissed his claims and maintained the drug was ineffective."

The new study on HCQ's effectiveness comes as Trump has seen a series of apparent vindications in recent days, which was not lost on his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

The younger Trump tweeted Wednesday, "In the last week alone, we've learned that the media, so-called fact checkers and their Big Tech enforcers lied to us about the lab-leak theory, Hydroxychloroquine and the clearing of Lafayette Square. All to hurt Donald Trump. What else are they lying about?"