United States President Donald Trump has said that he is taking the drug hydroxychloroquine.

In a White House press briefing, Mr Trump said he had taken one of the anti-malarial pills every day “for about a week-and-a-half”, adding “and I’m still here.”

It comes after the President repeatedly touted the drug in the early weeks of the pandemic as a “very strong, powerful medicine” that could be an effective therapy for coronavirus.

Asked by one reporter for evidence that the drug was effective at treating Covid-19, the President replied: “Here’s the evidence, I get a lot of positive calls about it.

Mr Trump also mentioned that he is taking zinc supplements - another substance rumoured to be a possible coronavirus treatment.

But the President’s latest hydroxychloroquine comments are in contrast to those made in previous weeks.

While he promoted the drug in early and mid-April, Mr Trump then distanced himself from his previous claims - after one clinical trial in US military hospitals showed that nearly a third of veterans with coronavirus died when treated with hydroxychloroquine.

Asked by Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker in late April why he had “stopped promoting hydroxychloroquine as a cure” for Covid-19, the President said: “I haven’t at all. I haven’t at all. What are you saying?”

“We’ll see what happens,” Mr Trump told Mr Rucker, “We’ve had a lot of very good results, and we had some results that perhaps aren’t so good, I don’t know, I just read about one, but I also read many times good.

“So I haven’t at all. And it’s a great (sic) - for malaria, for lupus, for other things, and we’ll see what it is.”

In early April, Forbes reported that President Trump had a “small personal financial interest” in Sanofi, a French drugmaker that produces hydroxychloroquine.

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President Trump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine

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