It’s been less than a week since Rio Giardinieri claimed his coronavirus was cured overnight by an anti-malaria drug touted by
President Trump and by
Fox News, and he has no complaints.
“Man, I'm alive and kickin’,” Giardinieri told Yahoo News over the phone Wednesday.
The story of Giardinieri’s remarkable recovery, which was first reported Monday by a local Fox affiliate in
Los Angeles, quickly became the subject of national news — and speculation — after it was picked up by the
New York Post and tweeted by President Trump, who hailed the news as a “great early result” from the drug which has yet to be approved as a treatment for coronavirus.
Clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine — a drug used to treat malaria and some autoimmune conditions such as lupus — in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin were set to begin in New York on Tuesday, but Trump had been touting the unproven drug combination as a “game changer” for coronavirus since last week.