The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control has approved the production of Chloroquine for clinical trial in tackling the virus.

Speaking in Lagos on Friday, the Director-General of the agency, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, stressed that NAFDAC was not approving Chloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 but for clinical trials to find treatment for the virus.

This came a day after the United States President Donald Trump said the country’s Food and Drug Administration had approved the drug to treat the virus, even though the FDA later said it had not approved the drug for treatment but that the drug could be used for clinical trial.

Adeyeye said, “In the case of Chloroquine, it has been demonstrated in the literature and with clinical research which is still ongoing, that chloroquine is superior to the Placebo.

“NAFDAC is not approving Chloroquine as a product that can be used for coronavirus because there is no submission to us for registration but because it is under clinical trials, NAFDAC approves medicines meant for clinical trial.

“Therefore the medicine is being approved just for the clinical trials.”

The NAFDAC boss called on experts and researchers interested in doing a clinical trial on chloroquine to approach approved outlets, adding that a drug company had been given an approval to produce chloroquine in batches.

“Right now, we have asked one company to make a batch of chloroquine for the purpose of clinical trial,” Adeyeye added.

Adeyeye also urged Nigerians not to use chloroquine as anti-malaria because it was no longer effective for treating malaria.

“Nobody should use chloroquine as anti-malaria because of the resistance that has been proven to develop in the past after the use of chloroquine in the population,” she said.