A recent opinion piece by Jinoos Yazdany, MD, MPH; Alfred H.J. Kim, MD, PhD.  The whole article is freely available by clicking on the link for the March 2020 Annals of Internal Medicine.

In the desperate search to find effective treatments for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), 2 generic drugs, used largely by rheumatologists and dermatologists to treat immune-mediated diseases, have entered the spotlight. The antimalarials hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and chloroquine (CQ) have demonstrated antiviral activity against severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS–CoV-2) in vitro and in small, poorly controlled or uncontrolled clinical studies (1–3). Normally, such research would be deemed hypothesis-generating at best. A tweet by President Trump on 21 March 2020 claiming that the combination of HCQ and azithromycin “ha[s] a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine” accelerated a worldwide run on the drugs, with pharmacies reporting shortages within 24 hours. Here, we try to provide guidance regarding clinical decision making both for patients with COVID-19 and those with immune-mediated conditions, such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and strategies to mitigate further harm to these patients.

In part the conclusions read as follow:

[Physicians] should avoid misuse of HCQ and CQ for the prophylaxis of COVID-19, because there are absolutely no data to support this. Public figures should refrain from promoting unproven therapies to the public, and instead provide clear messages around the uncertainties we face in testing and using experimental treatments during the current pandemic, including the risk for serious adverse events.