President Trump shares a video containing misinformation about hydroxychloroquine.

President Trump shares a video containing misinformation about hydroxychloroquine.

President Trump shared on his Twitter account Monday night a viral video containing a series of false or misleading medical claims about the coronavirus, as social media companies scrambled to halt the video’s rapid spread.

Facebook and YouTube removed versions of the video, and Twitter later removed the post shared by the president. At least one version, which was shared on Facebook by the right-wing Breitbart news site, had garnered over 13 million views before it was removed. Other versions of the video, including shorter, edited clips, were still online Monday night.

The video featured what appeared to be a group of doctors in white coats, standing in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., in what appeared to be a news conference. The doctors made a series of misleading claims, including that hydroxychloroquine could be taken as a preventive measure.

The use of the drug to treat or prevent coronavirus has been widely disputed by the medical establishment. The Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency authorization in June after deeming it “unlikely to be effective” while carrying potential risks, and the National Institutes of Health halted clinical trials of the drug in June. But Mr. Trump repeatedly boosted the drug in the early months of the crisis, and said in May (not in June, as an earlier post said) that he was taking it himself.

It was the most recent example of misinformation that has spread about the coronavirus, at times being shared by Mr. Trump and others in the White House. A YouTube spokesman said in a statement that the video had been removed for “violating Covid-19 misinformation policies.”