A flawed Covid-19 study gets the White House’s attention — and the FDA may pay the price

Even though multiple studies in thousands of patients have now shown that hydroxychloroquine is unlikely to benefit Covid-19 patients, the White House is once again trying to signal to the FDA to reauthorize the malaria drug for emergency use. A new Henry Ford study the White House is touting is flawed, experts say: Patients were not randomized and were also more likely to get steroids, which have been shown to help Covid-19 patients and which likely skewed the study's results. Experts are worried that the FDA may once again be pulled into a messy political debate. “The FDA cannot afford another misstep if it wants to maintain credibility with American people,” former FDA acting chief scientist Luciana Borio tells STAT's Matthew Herper. Read more here.

Here's what else is new with Covid-19:

Hours after President Trump called CDC guidelines for schools "tough and expensive," the agency said that it would reissue new guidelines for reopening schools in the fall. Speaking at a coronavirus task force press event, CDC Director Robert Redfield also said that the guidelines from his agency shouldn't be used to justify keeping schools closed.
As cases in Africa surpass half a million, the nonprofit Surgo Foundation just released an index to assess African nations' vulnerability to Covid-19 and how they could manage the economic and health effects of an outbreak. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most vulnerable nation in central Africa, the data show, owing to its poor health infrastructure and inadequate sanitation. Explore the index here.
Women in academia are publishing fewer paper since the pandemic, likely driven in large part by mothers spending more time caring for and teaching their kids. But some employers, including Massachusetts General Hospital, are now working to help fix the disparity by pausing the clock for tenure-track hopefuls and offering virtual conferencing options for women to present their research. STAT's Juliet Isselbacher has more.