Fox News Channel's senior managing editor for health news, Dr. Manny Alvarez, said late Monday that President Trump is acting "highly irresponsible" for taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure against contracting the coronavirus, adding that he would like "to hear from the White House physician" on the matter.

White House physician Sean Conley said in a Monday night statement that the "potential benefit outweighed the relative risks" in prescribing the drug for the president.

In a letter Monday to the director-general of WHO, Trump said that his administration's review of WHO's response to the outbreak found that the organization ignored "credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal."

The Lancet, however, said today "this statement is factually incorrect" and that it "published no report in December, 2019, referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China."

The Lancet said it first published reports on January 24, 2020.
The Lancet noted that the lead scientists and physicians on the study were from Chinese institutions and "worked with us to quickly make information about this new epidemic outbreak and the disease it caused fully and freely available to an international audience."

President Trump's physician on Monday confirmed that the president is now taking the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine despite not having the coronavirus, saying he and Trump concluded "the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks."

"In consultation with our inter-agency partners and subject matter experts around the country, I continue to monitor the myriad studies investigating potential COVID-19 therapies, and I anticipate employing the same shared medical decision making based on the evidence at hand in the future," Conley wrote.