A doctor at the veterans home in Lebanon used a malaria drug to treat eight patients there for coronavirus, but said a state rule enacted last month would prevent him from treating any more veterans there.

But after pushback against the Oregon Board of Pharmacy’s March 25 rule, the board amended it on Wednesday to allow the drug to be used not only in hospitals for confirmed COVID-19 cases, but also long-term care facilities like the Edward C. Allworth Veterans’ Home.

Hydroxychloroquine and a similar drug, chloroquine, showed encouraging signs in small, early tests against the coronavirus but has not proved safe or effective for this in any major scientific studies yet. It’s approved now for treating malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

In the second week of March, the first cases of the coronavirus began emerging at the veterans home, when two men fell ill with COVID-19. Then more got sick.

After hearing that hydroxychloroquine could be effective, Dr. Rob Richardson began treating eight of the veterans with it and an antibiotic called azithromycin, also known as Z-Pak.

"I was using it to give them a fighting chance," Richardson told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Among those treated appears to be William Lapschies, one of the first two confirmed cases. Lapschies celebrated his 104th birthday Wednesday at the veterans home and doctors have declared him fully recovered, said his daughter, Carolee Brown of Lyons.

William Lapschies, recently recovered from coronavirus, celebrates his 104th birthday with a small group of family, at the Edward C. Allworth Veterans’ Home in Lebanon, Oregon, on April 1, 2020.Brooke Herbert/The Oregonian/OregonLive

Lapschies was treated with malaria-fighting drug on the night he had a fever and seemed to be seriously declining, Brown said. He was doing better the very next day and able to move around in his wheelchair, she said.

The Oregon Board of Pharmacy had adopted a temporary emergency rule March 25 prohibiting the dispensing of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine “for presumptive treatment or prevention of COVID-19 infection.”

The board said it took the action to preserve supplies for treatment of malaria, inflammatory conditions, and documented COVID-19 infection in hospitalized patients.

It was the “hospitalized” part that would have prevented Richardson from treating more patients with the same drugs that the federal Food and Drug Administration, on March 28, allowed to be used on COVID-19 patients.

“We’re not a hospital,” Richardson said in a telephone interview. “We’re a skilled nursing facility.”

But late Wednesday, the pharmacy board changed its regulation, allowing “for a seriously ill patient in an institutional setting, such as Correctional Facilities and Long-Term Care Facilities, who would otherwise be hospitalized” to receive the drugs.

“It was never our intent to exclude seriously-ill COVID-19 patients in institutional settings, who would otherwise be hospitalized, from receiving these treatments as prescribed by a doctor, and our guidance has been updated to reflect that,” Joe Schnabel, executive director of the Oregon Board of Pharmacy, said in an email.

Of the eight patients that Richardson treated with hydroxychloroquine and Z-Pak, seven recovered and one — a 91-year-old patient — died. Richardson has no conclusive evidence that the treatment led to their recovery but there were no negative side effects.

Denise Hinton, chief scientist of the federal FDA, wrote on March 28 that “it is reasonable to believe that chloroquine phosphate and hydroxychloroquine sulfate may be effective in treating COVID-19.”

In her letter, she authorized use of the two drugs “during the COVID-19 pandemic to treat patients for whom a clinical trial is not available, or participation is not feasible.”

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in several weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.

(Fedor Zarkhin of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.)

-- The Associated Press