Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Sunday sought to downplay a public disagreement with President Donald Trump over whether a malaria drug could be used to treat coronavirus.

“There’s an issue here of where we’re coming from,” Fauci said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.


“The president, as heard, as we all have heard, what are what I call anecdotal reports that certain drugs work,” Fauci said. “So what he was trying to do and express was the hope that if they might work, let's try and push their usage. I, on the other side, have said I'm not disagreeing with the fact [that] anecdotally they might work, but my job is to prove definitively from a scientific standpoint that they do work.“